I have already written about how my experience with college professors is different than my experience with high school teachers, so now as my second year of college comes to an end, I decided to write about college classes. However, I didn't want this to become a RateMyProfessors type of post, so I decided to omit the class names (with one exception) and talk about what made the class experience memorable or worthy of mention.
The most random classes I have ever taken
Before college, I never had much autonomy to choose my classes because of the way the system at my high school worked. So freshman year I really explored this freedom, and this landed me in some really random classes with the general requirements of the Emory curriculum as justification. This exploration allowed me to meet exotic professors and really understand how diverse the Emory student body is. From a class about fairytales to a class that had as its main assignment learning to read the tarot and make predictions about your personal life, my experience at Emory has been really unpredictable.
QTM 100
Neither I nor my GPA will ever get over this class. How is it that in a school as prestigious and well ranked as Emory there is a class that is as badly taught as QTM100 baffles me. I have never heard anyone say they enjoyed this class, and with the exception of one person (literally only one person) whenever QTM100 comes up in a conversation people talk about how badly they did in this class. Telling someone not to take this class isn't an option because it's a major requirement for so many majors, which honestly makes how poorly taught it is an even bigger problem.
The class that killed my GPA but I don't regret taking
This class wasn't poorly taught, it was just really hard. Although it killed my GPA and gave me considerable stress, I don't regret taking this class because I didn't even know it was possible to learn so much in such a short space of time as a semester.
The class I always forget I took
The most memorable thing about this class is that I got a decent grade but literally didn't learn anything. I mean, I feel bad telling people I took this class because then they will expect I know something concerning its subject matter, and this couldn't be further from the truth. There were only two assignments for the class and these were both take home, but I feel like this doesn't explain exactly how I managed not to retain any sort of content. I have taken other classes that didn't have exams and learned a lot in them, so the reason for my amnesia concerning this class remains a mystery to me.
Discussion based classes vs. big lectures
My classes in high school mostly consisted of about fifteen people and due to my high school is really small I always knew everyone in the class. This changed drastically in college, and one of my favorite things about the beginning of the semester is observing the new people in my classes. I found out I really like the having classes that are different sizes, from small discussion-based classes where you get to know at least the first name of most people in the class to big lectures where I feel like I am invisible (and not in a bad way).
