Article 3: Simply McMaster

Section (2): Courses and Elm

                So the next question many of the first years ask is what is the best way to tackle courses and even more frequently asked question is which courses to take in first year. To be frank, the courses I chose in first year didn’t exactly work out the way I had hoped, especially my electives. The reason for this is my lack of research. So my recommendation to you would be to research, research, research. Know what you are taking before you take a leap into that course. You wouldn’t buy a house without knowing its history or its value or possibly who is living next to you. So make sure you know the difficulty of that course, the focus of that course and most of all the approach that profs in the course will take. For example, one of my first year electives was environmental sciences. Now I am not a big fan of environmental sciences, so why did I take it? I heard it was easy. Don’t do that. Seriously consider the consequences of taking bird courses along with its benefits. Next, the bigger problem for me with that course was that I did not know which section of that course to take!! All courses have differing levels according to their code. I had selected 1G03 while it was 1B03 or 1A03 which was the easier one. ENVIRO SCI 1G03 was meant for students going into environmental studies in second year which was not my plan at all. So not only did I regret taking the course but I also did terrible in it meaning that it brought my average down. Although, I have to say my prof, John, was amazing. He loves his subject and he taught it really well. I only have myself to blame for my lack of success in that course. To summarize my point, take something you will enjoy as your elective not something that is just easy. Next, make sure if you are taking the course as a bird course you select the right course code because you don’t want to make first year harder for yourself. By the way, I will not directly point out which courses are bird courses but hopefully you can read between the lines…My next elective was Econ 1B03, micro economics which was an extremely boring course in general due to the lack of material. It was however as promised before relatively easy and definitely brought my average up…Now if you chose to take this course, make sure you understand the concepts rather than focusing on learning everything. It is a fun course if you enjoy graphs and reading data off of them Some other electives that were enjoyed by my friends were French, macro economics, med phys and even chemistry (Anne took chem as her electives).