What you think of GE courses?

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Dreamer03

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As for me, I think they are a waste of time. Most fo those classes are the once you take at high school and other you don't even need for your major at all. And well saves lots of money. But what you think? Useful, not useful?
 
Not useful and yes a big waste of money. My first semester of college I didn't open a book whole time. Wait no that's not true...it's just I took creative writing and the guy would assign to read chapters. Try reading about writing...that must be the most boring thing ever, I'd fall asleep every time I opened that book. But even my math and intro to psych courses....I took them in high school. I was extremely annoyed and it was a small contributor to why I quit.
 
These last two years...probably the "electives" I took are the only classes that I actually learned something. The rest just repeat.
 
If I wasn't required to take gen ed classes I wouldn't be a photographer now... I took art to satisfy liberal education requirements and it snowballed. I'm glad I took it. Gen eds were always my favorite courses... I know so much useless info now about clouds, Greek mythology, anthropology, anatomy and bones (I can now tell what race, gender, and age a skeleton is!), nutrition (not useless).... I don't regret doing gen eds... And I definitely wouldn't have discovered art if I wasn't pushed into it.
 
ohmylight said:
If I wasn't required to take gen ed classes I wouldn't be a photographer now... I took art to satisfy liberal education requirements and it snowballed. I'm glad I took it. Gen eds were always my favorite courses... I know so much useless info now about clouds, Greek mythology, anthropology, anatomy and bones (I can now tell what race, gender, and age a skeleton is!), nutrition (not useless).... I don't regret doing gen eds... And I definitely wouldn't have discovered art if I wasn't pushed into it.
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Mine were a nice change from all the math, chemistry, and physics. I got an appreciation of art, even things that didn't look like what they were supposed to be. Learned about other cultures. Took a running class and wound up on the cross country team. Immediately followed by water aerobics when I blew out my ankle the first week. GE - they bring good things to life. Sorry someone had to say it.
 
Industries change. People change. You may be training for a particular career by studying the courses required by your major, and maybe that will go great for you. But for many people, they start working in the field, and it doesn't work out so well. Maybe they're not well suited to the work environment, or some other aspect of the field they hadn't realized something about. Or maybe it does go well, but after a few years you start to burn out and need to think about what else you might do. Or maybe you love it and want to continue, but some change in technology makes your department obsolete.

So then you have to think about what else you might want to do, what else you might be able to do, what else is out there? If you trained strictly for your first career, you might be low on ideas, exposure to subjects that might have inspired some interest within you, or even just given you an awareness of other possibilities.

So I don't think they're a waste of time. Unless you treat them like they are, and then they quickly become that for you.

Our working lives can go on for a long time. Not all jobs do. Best to be as engaged as you can in whatever learning opportunities you have, and try to be open to any self-discovery in the process: give yourself all the options you can.
 
My accounting degree required that I complete 180 credits and the core curicullum courses falls short of that goal. So I took up geography and kinesiology. Better learning something useful than sliding through something I won't have an interest in.
 
I guess it is different for many. I still found most of my general education useless. I learned more on high school than o did with the general courses. It was only the electives i took that actually helped me, except maybe for english because o have always been bad at writing. Like i took economics and even learned how to do my taxes. Some child development classes that were not included but i took as extra credits, that one helped. Then the laguage classes i took to get extra units. Maybe its juat i am not found of art classes. And well classes sich as biology, chemistry, calculus, physics, even my intro to psy (which im a psych major) were all repeated material from high school. I think it would have been more beneficial at least on my case to take classes relayed to my major or at least classes i havent taken before. I guess because money is also an ossie for me. That contributes to my dislike ok GE courses.
 
In the courses where the material was repeated from what you learned in high school, did they not give you the option to test out and take a more advanced course?
 
I didn't have that option. The math, biology, and intro to psych courses I took in college were basically the same as the ones I took in high school, but not as in depth. The high school courses went over the whole school year, but the college courses covered the same material but was jammed into one semester. I was going to major in psych so I absolutely couldn't skip, and the course I took in high school was college level. Almost all my core courses in high school were college level. I was freaking pissed I was basically paying to redo half my senior year. I took trig and probability and statistics my senior year which was basically what the finite math course I had to take in college.

Granted this was 20 years ago, maybe things have changed.
 
I think I was especially pissed because I had enough credits at the end of my junior year to graduate. I technically only had to have more credits in English, I could have taken one semester if an Wnglish course and graduated early. But I still went the full year with a full course load both semesters, I took all kinds of classes and had like 12 more credits than I needed to graduate. So when I got to college and had to retake some of them I was a wee bit pissed off lol

I took more math for gods sake and I didn't even need it, trig prob and statistics was basically an elective for me, I didn't more math credits to graduate, but I did, and then I had to pay for it in college too. Ahhhhhhhh
 
That's why I enjoyed grad school more than undergrad school. My poor husband is going through that now and it will take him forever to get his BA degree as he is starting from scratch.
 
I was able to test out of some corses such as spanish, lower english classes and some calc stuff but not all the things i went through high school. For some reason we would tske the AP classes and then not be able to take the test. And for some ithers. You had to take the class even if you passed the AP exam. So not really...no way out of it. Im happy im done with most of my general education. And my 4th time taking biology, cuz one time is not enough...(forced to take it in 9th grade and ciz there was no chemistry for 10th grade, forced to take it again, again in community college, and once more at university after i transfered)
 
Dreamer03 said:
I was able to test out of some corses such as spanish, lower english classes and some calc stuff but not all the things i went through high school. For some reason we would tske the AP classes and then not be able to take the test. And for some ithers. You had to take the class even if you passed the AP exam. So not really...no way out of it. Im happy im done with most of my general education. And my 4th time taking biology, cuz one time is not enough...(forced to take it in 9th grade and ciz there was no chemistry for 10th grade, forced to take it again, again in community college, and once more at university after i transfered)
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How weird, not being allowed to take the AP test after taking the AP class, or not having a passed exam count for the class when you got to college. Really sorry to hear it - that sucks, learning something and then having to sit through someone talking about the same thing over again. I'm glad to hear you were able to test out of some of the classes, sorry to hear the admin didn't have its act together enough so that you could have done that with everything.
 
College was how I learned that I am a good construction worker. Those GE courses weeded me out nicely. The system really does work!
 
What about foreign language requirements? Many people think that it isn't needed for their field of study. Maybe they are right. Maybe not. If those people thought hard, they'll realize how important it is to have taken a foreign language class or 2 for their field of study.

Then again, I'm very thankful for all schools that offer foreign language as a requirement. How many ASL students and future interpreters to be will we have if it was not for schools that offered language requirement?

I would imagine that the same would apply to GE requirements.
 
dereksbicycles said:
What about foreign language requirements? Many people think that it isn't needed for their field of study. Maybe they are right. Maybe not. If those people thought hard, they'll realize how important it is to have taken a foreign language class or 2 for their field of study.

Then again, I'm very thankful for all schools that offer foreign language as a requirement. How many ASL students and future interpreters to be will we have if it was not for schools that offered language requirement?

I would imagine that the same would apply to GE requirements.
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It was because of the foreign language requirement at Arizona State was how I learned ASL and discovered the Deaf community. In a way, GE courses did change my life for the better because I was in so much denial about being able to thrive in the hearing world.
 
ASL was not really a GE here. I took it because i wanted but didnt go into my GE. Spanish and French do go in thought. But I was able to get the credita for Spanish. I guess here were i live...like 99% of people know english and spanish so those courses usually not hard to pass. At least here, Spanish is truely a repeat of the first language of almost everyone here.
 
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