So you know how I said in my last blog post that I was feeling pumped for this semester? That feeling did not last very long.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad that I am back and doing something productive with my time, but there is something unappealing about 9am lectures and assignments due in the third week. Not only that, but I feel like I’ve taken a while to settle back into university life. Everything has felt kind of jumbled and my mind hasn’t been very clear, and I don’t know why. It might just be because it’s the beginning of the semester, but I’m finally settling back into the rhythm of things.
So although it has felt like this past week has gone super quick, I did learn something quite valuable. If you don’t like a class or you think that it’s too much, you don’t have to suffer through it. Although I was finding my BIOSCI paper interesting, it was taking up far too much of my time. The lectures covered a lot of content in 50 minutes, so even if you were writing down as much as you could, you would still have to revisit the lecture afterwards. It also meant that you were focusing on writing down what was on the slides instead not paying attention to what the lecturer was saying.
So I took to writing out my lecture notes beforehand. While this meant that I could listen to the lecturer, it was still taking up about an hour of my time every day. I found that I didn’t want to commit so much time to a class that wasn’t really necessary for my degree, so I dropped my BIOSCI 103 class over the weekend.
I chose to pick a Geography paper to replace it. It only has 3 lectures a week and a 2-hour lab every fortnight. Yes, it sucks that I start off on the back foot, having missed the first three lectures, but I would rather have to catch up on some lectures than go through a semester feeling unhappy and stressed out by a course that is not even necessary for my degree. Remember that you are in charge of your own learning at university; if you don’t like a course, change it! It’s as simple as that 🙂
That’s my little pearl of wisdom for this post! Secret Admirer’s Week is on at Whitaker Hall next week, so I’ll be making a blog post about the shenanigans that ensue.
Until next time – Emily