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*U-Wire member papers have full permission to reprint all or part of this column. Enjoy! This Week: • If a class in my major bores me, does it mean the major's not for me? • Is a double major worth it? • What's so bad about unaccredited colleges? (questions may have been edited for length, grammar and/or to maintain the sender's privacy.) Dear Professor K: I'm majoring in psychology, yet I am not so sure. I get the feeling I am getting taught the same stuff over and over since my general psych. class. Is it because I have just lost interest in it? I would need to know a lot more about you and your department, but let me give it a try. Here are a few possibilities: 1) Every discipline has central concepts that recur from class to class. Rather than being bored by them, try to think about how you might see them differently in light of the context of a different class, more experience, more knowledge, and so on. 2) Some departments are too small to offer a large number of higher-level courses that have prerequisites. If that's the case, you might ask your professors for recommendations on additional items you can read or issues you can consider. 3) If you're really bored, ask yourself a few questions. Are you bored in other classes as well, or just this class psych class? Are you in school because you want to be, or because someone said you should be? What about psychology interested you in the first place? Do you still feel the same way? If you can find the reasons you're in school and majoring in psych, it might become clearer why you're bored. If, when you've had a chance to think over your interests and your motivations, you realize that psych is still a subject you're interested in, then it may be a good idea to talk to your professor or to your classmates about why you feel uninspired in this particular class. It could be the specific subject matter, the teaching style of the professor, even the time of day or the amount of sleep you've been getting. If, on the
other hand, you realize that maybe you're not as passionate about
psych as you once were, no problem - give some thought to other
subjects you may enjoy (possibly similar ones, like sociology, or
more different ones, like anthropology or even biology) and start
taking some classes in those as well. Maybe you'll find another
major that's more suited to your interests. I am currently majoring in history and secondary education. I recently talked with my neighbor, who is also majoring in history. He wants to teach, as I do, but he's going to hold off on taking education courses until he gets his bachelor's degree. He feels he should just focus on history, and that having two majors is too much work. This made sense to me, and I was thinking of doing the same thing. Do you feel this is a good idea? This is really your call. Think of it this way: In favor of double majoring, you get to pursue several interests at once, you don't get pigeonholed, and people are impressed when looking at your transcript. Against it are several factors. First, you have less room for major electives in history. Second, as you point out, your energy is less focussed. And third, you have less room for NON-major electives, which you should look forward to in your senior year, especially. For some students,
double majors are an excellent idea, and for others, they're an
unnecessary burden. It depends most of all on your personality and
interests. What are the negatives are of going to a college that isn't accredited? The college I'm planning on going to is an unaccredited one. I would urge you to reconsider. There are several reasons not to go to a school that's not accredited. First of all, it probably means the quality of the curriculum and faculty doesn't meet the standards of the accrediting bodies, and therefore your education will not be of the quality you deserved.Second, you might well not be able to go to graduate school, or get graduate funding, with an unaccredited degree. Third, and most practically, more and more companies are signing on to quality assurance programs that require that they see proof of your education, and unaccredited colleges won't count. Although accrediting
bodies are not flawless, they are an important tool for quality
assurance within the *education* industry, and I hope you'll take
them seriously. Dr. Anahid Kassabian is a professor of communication and media studies at Fordham University in New York.
© 2001 Virtually Advising |
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