Half the course, half the time, half the work right?...WRONG!
Why didn't anyone tell me beforehand that half courses are U of T's method of killing student grades/happiness? As if U of T wasn't hard enough already. Now maybe I'm speaking a little bit bluntly here (and mind you this is only my opinion), but so far I am definitely not enjoying the realities of half courses. Currently I am taking a sociology half course and it definitely is not my favourite elective right now. The only saving grace is that I'll be through with it in three more weeks, and thank goodness its almost come to an end (oh btw if you haven't figured this out already, this post is mostly a rant)
Maybe its because last year I had five full year courses, and I'm just not used to the way that all of the course work is condensed into a mere 13 weeks, but still who's idea was this anyway? I mean a 50% test on only a months worth of content, which also covers about 140pgs of material? Not to mention that the test was insanely difficult and intentionally confusing, I mean who in the right mind does this to us anyway? There are a whole list of reasons I have here for why I think half courses are terrible, so here we go:
First off the whole course feels rushed: You learn it, get tested on it the next week, and your on to the next thing. There isn't much time for elaboration when the prof needs to cover so much in such a short period of time. Also you're guaranteed to be tested in December as opposed to being able to take in all that info for April. Now maybe this is easier for some people, but I enjoy having the extra time.
It seems though that all of the interesting and specific courses are half courses anyways, so it seems like as we go into upper years we are all basically S*** out of luck. The half courses sound cool at first, for instance my sociology course I'm taking is on "Crime and Deviance", which naturally means criminals and hardcore drug dealers, with all of those other illegal hooligans in between. Its all in the description of the course heading in the calendar, but once you actually get there to take the course you realize that U of T has a unique talent in making an interesting course all theory based *sigh.
But I don't want to be too cynical heading into the last lag of term 1, so why not look at the upsides too, I'm an optimistic guy right?:
- Bad prof? Only half the time
- Annoying classmates? No problem they'll be gone by December anyways.
- Doing bad in the course, the pain will only last half as long (relatively)
- Boring course? Meh its only 13 lectures anyways.
So there you have it, oh the joys of half courses. But it seems that it is a reality we will all have to deal with anyways, so we all better get used to it right? Well it still doesn't mean we can't complain about it 🙂
If Only
Shak
PS. Shout out to Jenny for "Acing" that midterm with me. You too Laura
First off the whole course feels rushed: You learn it, get tested on it the next week, and your on to the next thing. There isn't much time for elaboration when the prof needs to cover so much in such a short period of time. Also you're guaranteed to be tested in December as opposed to being able to take in all that info for April. Now maybe this is easier for some people, but I enjoy having the extra time.
It seems though that all of the interesting and specific courses are half courses anyways, so it seems like as we go into upper years we are all basically S*** out of luck. The half courses sound cool at first, for instance my sociology course I'm taking is on "Crime and Deviance", which naturally means criminals and hardcore drug dealers, with all of those other illegal hooligans in between. Its all in the description of the course heading in the calendar, but once you actually get there to take the course you realize that U of T has a unique talent in making an interesting course all theory based *sigh.
But I don't want to be too cynical heading into the last lag of term 1, so why not look at the upsides too, I'm an optimistic guy right?:
- Bad prof? Only half the time
- Annoying classmates? No problem they'll be gone by December anyways.
- Doing bad in the course, the pain will only last half as long (relatively)
- Boring course? Meh its only 13 lectures anyways.
So there you have it, oh the joys of half courses. But it seems that it is a reality we will all have to deal with anyways, so we all better get used to it right? Well it still doesn't mean we can't complain about it 🙂
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