Using Your Elective Courses

Electives are pretty valuable college classes. Throughout your college career, you’ll be able to take a certain amount of classes that are whatever you want them to be. With these classes, you have free reign. You don’t have to stick with a class in your major or minor; you can really explore what your college has to offer. However, there are some things to keep in mind with your electives.

First of all, don’t use them up in your first or second semester. In those first semesters, you may not even want to take one elective class. The reasoning is that you’re getting used to this new environment. You’re deciding what things you’re interested in. If you start taking electives right off the bat, there may be classes later in your college years that throughout time you have discovered an interest in but you have no elective credits left. You’ll want to use your electives sparingly until your later years in college. Plus, by waiting to take those elective classes, you’ll be able to take those core classes like Math, History, or English that you may only need one or two classes in and get them out of the way.

Don’t use all of your elective credits on classes in your major. You may really love your English or History major, but don’t use all of your elective credits on taking more classes within those subjects. You want your college education to be well rounded both for your college experience and for your future career. Use these extra classes to explore classes you find you’re interested in whether a lot or a little. You may find that you have more of an interest in the topic or subject than you thought and it alters your career path a little bit. Your electives can give you a lot of benefits if you let them, and the first step is to branch out from classes in your major subject. You don’t want to get out of college and find yourself having regrets, wishing you took certain classes for your electives instead of more classes in your major.

Don’t know where to begin when you start looking for electives? Start by browsing the college course catalog! You’ll be able to see what is offered, a sentence or two about the class, and if there are any prerequisites that you also might be interested in.

College Course Registration

Starting out college can be pretty stressful – you’re possibly living in a dorm room or an on or off campus apartment and then there’s all the stress that goes with starting college classes and registering for them. While this can be stressful at first, it does get better. It’s the newness of the situation that will give you the most stress. You’re going to be in a new environment and doing different things like possibly living on your own and planning your own college schedule. Sure, you’ll have an academic advisor, but they won’t be registering you for classes – they’re there to help you out, not do the work for you like your advisor in high school may have done. What this means is a few things – you’re going to have to pick out the classes you want to take on your own, register on your own, and also be prepared for anything by having a back-up option for every class on your planned schedule. Classes fill up quickly, especially when you’re a freshman and get the last round of registration – you’re going to need to create a back-up schedule because chances are you won’t get your first pick. 

Now once you get accepted into your college of choice and you sit down and look at the credits the college wants you to take, you’re going to be really overwhelmed, we’re not going to lie. You’re looking at taking 120+ credits throughout your time there and when you look at the course credit map you may just want to curl up in your bed, sleep, and forget about it. It isn’t that bad though. You’re going to be breaking it up into chunks and we’re going to help you with how you can do that. 

First of all, make sure you have a master copy of the credits you need to take, get a designated folder for it, and keep it throughout all of your years at college. Make a spreadsheet if you want/have to. What you’re going to do with this sheet is keep track of the classes as you take them throughout all of your college years. You don’t need to take detailed notes here – simply crossing/checking items off will do (if there are multiple credits that you need to take, such as in your major, then expect to cross something off multiple times – this means you don’t want to completely black out the subject and instead make sure it’s still legible). The more detailed class list of classes you’ve taken will be in your online course management system that shows your grades, GPA, and any other relevant information. 

Obviously, when you first have this course credit list it’s going to be scary because you have nothing crossed off. It looks like an overwhelming mess, but put a positive spin on it by thinking of it as an open road with plenty of possibilities. You can’t and don’t want to start off your college life by taking all electives. In fact, leave those until later, possibly even your second year of college. You definitely don’t want to start off with electives in your first semester – you’re just starting out college and need to get used to things and you may develop interests in other classes throughout your college years and want to use your electives then. You also don’t want to start out your first semester with a lot of classes from your chosen major. Classes for your chosen major (for example English or History classes) will make up the bulk of your college credits, but you don’t want to pack your early semesters with them. 

Are there any classes you need to take as a Freshman, specifically a first semester freshman? Add those into your course schedule first. Are there any classes such as Math that you only need to take one or two classes in just to fulfil your core class obligation? Add those in next. Don’t procrastinate and leave these until later. Get these done and over with while you still have fresh knowledge about the subject from high school. It will make things a lot easier for you, trust us. 

The best way to build your first semester schedule is to take a class from each subject until you’ve fulfilled your required credit limit. Whatever you do, don’t reach for the maximum amount of credits your first semester! You’ll burn yourself out way too quickly.

Getting Too Involved in College – Striking a Balance

Yes, getting too involved in college is a thing. On one hand, this is good because it means you’re enjoying your time at college and getting as much as you can from it. However, when college activities take up all your spare time and you find yourself looking up book summaries for English class online, it may be time to step back. 

Being in college is all about striking a balance. Too much of any one thing is not a good thing. You don’t want to get involved in nothing while in college and just go to your classes and come back to your dorm room and work on homework. Yet you don’t want to be gone all the time, either. Getting involved in college has to do with more than your college classes. When you’re involved in college, you’re trying to balance classes, homework, and a job with college clubs and organizations and sports. Unfortunately, if you’re halfway through the semester and now feeling like you took on too much, it isn’t going to be a class that you’ll have to drop. You may have to limit your involvement in a club or organization or maybe even stop playing a sport. It can be tough when you become overwhelmed to decide which activity to drop.

So how do you strike a balance and not get too involved to the point of being incredibly overwhelmed? Start with your college classes. During registration time, map out your ideal schedule based on what classes you want to take during the semester. This will allow you a visual representation of how much time you actually have. It could be more than you thought, it could be less than you thought. Having this visual representation will allow you to more accurately plot your time and activities. Once you figure out your class schedule, block off time in this schedule that you plan on working on homework for each class. This is where you will want to overestimate by quite a bit. You don’t know how demanding each of these new classes you’re taking will be. You may have minimal homework or you may have to read a novel every week or two. Be overly generous with how much time you block off for studying – chances are you will have this situation where one class doesn’t have a lot of homework and another is demanding and takes up a good chunk of the time you devoted to that other class. Most importantly, don’t forget you will want free time to read for fun, watch a movie, play video games – whatever you do to de-stress. Once you have this schedule created, you will have good idea of what you can devote to activities and sports. Can you play 3 different sports on this schedule you created and be involved with 2 clubs? Probably not. It can be a little saddening to see your time blocked off in this way and seeing how much time you don’t have for those extra activities, but it is better than getting partway through the semester and feeling exhausted and overwhelmed.