The Shorthorn - Taking core classes first can save you from a "major" headache later

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Taking core classes first can save you from a "major" headache later

Written by Jacob Becker, The Shorthorn columnist

Thursday, 28 January 2010 03:57 PM

It’s the age-old college story: you enroll with your ideal degree in mind, whether it’s engineering or nursing or any number of majors.

But reality hits when you find yourself struggling to pass the classes of your major. At this point, many find themselves in need of direction when the academic road they were traveling hits GPA gridlock.

Luckily the university provides a road map for a detour, if you catch it in time. The university’s core curriculum requirements are supposed to give you a healthy taste of the variety our university has to offer, and provide a balanced education in the process.

After all, the point of college is to learn who we are, what we’re good at and what it is we want to do as educated adults.

So why do we have to know these answers going into college?

It’s easy to blow off the core classes, but if you really dedicate yourself to them, you may discover in the first few semesters that your interests in major-related classes have changed.

The university offers 180 bachelor’s, master’s and doctorate degree programs across the 10 colleges and schools, with course options that would take a day and a half to read through. We all have passions and this university has excelled in trying to provide degree plans that fit all who are willing to look for them.

While I know many dive into college wanting to jump into their major courses, I recommend taking your core classes early in your academic career.

This will help to avoid being stuck on a degree path you find is not to your liking, that way you are able to test your academic horizons while securing necessary credit hours in the process.

Certainly it is not always appealing for a math or science major student to have to take a liberal arts course such as history, but who knows what passion might be sparked with the right professor striking at the course’s issues.

The problem is evident.

Of the freshmen entering in the fall of 2003, an astounding 69 percent graduated in more than the desired four years, according to the UTA Fact Book. With 50 percent of UTA students changing majors at least once, one can’t help but think maybe we have an issue in wasted time with degree confusion.

If you withhold from taking major courses until you have to, it provides you with a safety net against falling into that 69 percent of extended stay students.

We all may love the idea of college life with no end, but there are few that would enjoy the stress of finals forever.

By all means, do a little wandering in career ideas and enjoy a little degree sight seeing across semesters of core classes. And when asked what you are studying, reply, “a little bit of everything”, because that is exactly what we are meant to do as underclassmen.

You might be accused of being indecisive, but the more of the academic world you experience now, the better you will know in which sphere you belong later.