Year One, Semester Two

Hey all,

I’ve been planning out my classes for this semester since the middle of October. Looking at course offerings is one of my favourite ways to procrastinate–it seems productive! A lot of people have trouble coming up with what they want to take and rely on their advisors to suggest classes and help them explore their interests. We’re required to have appointments with our advisors before we register for classes, which is useful, even for people like me, just to check in that I’ll be meeting my major requirements.

I’m taking Spanish for the first time in almost two years. I hadn’t planned to take Spanish at ALL, since I had done well enough on the placement test to fulfil my language requirement. However, I decided I really wanted to keep up my Spanish skills and asked the teacher if I could audit it. I met with the head of the Spanish department, and realized that if I take an additional two Spanish courses and the Politics of Latin America (a class I already planned to take) I would have a minor.

I cannot say that I have a favourite class because I ADORE all of my classes, but if I had to pick, I might say Memoir Writing would be it. Get this–we’re required to write five pages a week. This is heaven for me–it gives me an excuse to spend time writing! And in our first class, we had time to write. I was so ridiculously happy. Our teacher also seems incredible, and I’m excited to get to know her more. I was especially lucky to get in as a freshman, but since I’m a declared major, I was able to register early.

Terrorism and Counterterrorism is a special topics class, which means it may only be offered this one time. Since so many people wanted to take it, it’ll probably be offered again, but again, I was really lucky to get into this course. I emailed the professor as soon as the class closed and talked to the head of the polisci department and they created extra spots. The class is larger than normal, but everyone seems to really be interested in the class, so it’ll be super interesting.

I’m taking US Foreign Policy partially because I’ve heard amazing things about its teacher all year and I wanted to have him. He hasn’t disappointed. I’m really excited to learn about diplomacy and how the US treats all these different countries in a variety of ways; it should be super interesting.

I was a little nervous about taking Computer Organization. It’s a 2000 level course, and the prereqs are CSC 1106 and they recommend 1109. I took AP Computer Science three years ago, which waived me 1106, which means I should be taking 1109 now. However, 1109 is taught at the same time as my terrorism class AND my memoir writing class, and I didn’t want to give those up. However, I’m going to be fine in Computer Organization–I’m already having, believe it or not, fun doing the math we’ve been doing and I know if I struggle I can always go to my professor’s office hours.

My final class is a 2 credit class at 8:30 on Tuesday and Thursday mornings. (Don’t ask me what I was thinking!) Digital MIDI lab has 4 students in it and we’ll be learning about the basics of creating and editing music digitally. Though I may not use these skills in later life, it’s going to be super enriching on a personal level.

I’m taking 22 credits, which is the maximum course load, but I know that if I stay organized, I’ll be successful in all of my classes.

Ema