{"id":30453,"date":"2017-01-24T08:55:55","date_gmt":"2017-01-24T13:55:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/?p=30453"},"modified":"2017-01-24T08:55:55","modified_gmt":"2017-01-24T13:55:55","slug":"small-changes-big-results","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/2017\/01\/24\/small-changes-big-results\/","title":{"rendered":"Small Changes, Big Results"},"content":{"rendered":"Over the past few years I have been formulating this image of the person I want to become, specifically academically. That's why it was a surprise to not only my parents but anyone who knows me personally that I chose some courses unrelated to this mental picture I had envisioned. My ideal course load includes a lot of mathematics and economics, but I decided to expand on this and test other social science courses. \u00a0I guess at the time I wanted to test out the waters like a lot first-year students before 100% committing to anything.\r\n\r\nI wanted to take advantage of the courses U of T had to offer. I remember the day I had to decide on all my courses. I was so used to being told exactly what to do that the liberty to take the courses that sounded the most interesting to me was sort of a challenge. I second guessed myself, wondering if the courses I was enrolling in were best suited to my image. Sometimes we are presented with so many options, that we simply don't know what to choose. I used the idea of completing all my breadth requirements in my first year as an excuse to test unrelated courses.\r\n\r\nAs the semester progressed I noticed two things. First, the courses I chose to fulfill breadth requirements gave me the chance to combine other areas of study with my future goal. I found most of my courses interesting except one, and luckily enough this course selection mistake I was able to change. Second, I started to realize I was becoming less and less interested in one of my elective courses (full-year course). U of T allows you to drop any course (full credit or half) until a deadline which varies on your faculty.\r\n\r\nI decided to use the University's resources, specifically the college registrar. Currently, I am a student under the Faculty of Arts & Science and a member of Woodsworth College.\u00a0For this one course I did not particularly enjoy, I spoke to my college registrar and she helped me to make the right decision. I was able to drop my course with no consequences since I did it before my Faculty's deadline. My college registrar helped me look for alternative courses and taught me about the useful online tool Degree Explorer<\/a>. Together we worked to find a new course that was more suitable for my own interests, and I ended up enrolling in an extra mathematics course and also enrolling into a first-year seminar course while also dropping a full year social science course.\r\n\r\nThis change in my academic schedule has me in a smaller class of only 25 students while on the course I decided to drop we were over 800. Don't get me wrong, I like the large classroom atmosphere and most of my classes are this way, but I thought that this year would be a great time to get myself into a smaller classroom setting while taking advantage of the varying topics covered in seminar courses. This small classroom setting is much more personal than my other larger classes, in this setting I find it easier to talk to everyone around me and get to know the professor at at different level.\r\n\r\n\"planning\"\r\n\r\nThe University has a lot of resources to help you with your courses. I love my first-year courses from the beginning, but I am glad there is a drop option available. This year I am able to explore so many different aspects of the education I envisioned in my future and will work to bind together forming this new version of the person I envision myself to become. Since next year, I will have completed all my breath requirements I will not be taking any electives but instead, I have chosen to take all courses related to my future major.\r\n\r\n ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\n
\nOver the past few years I have been formulating this image of the person I want to become, specifically academically. That's why it was a surprise to not only my parents but anyone who knows me personally that I chose…\n<\/div>
Continue reading “Small Changes, Big Results”<\/span>…<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>
Continue reading “Small Changes, Big Results”<\/span>…<\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"author":303,"featured_media":30454,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7204,6669,67],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30453"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/303"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30453"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30453\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30564,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30453\/revisions\/30564"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30454"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}