Academics can be pretty stressful

It’s that time of the year again: course selection time! And as usual, I’ve left my course selections to the day before my advisor appointment. Tomorrow is my appointment with Professor Potter, where we’ll discuss the courses I want to take, hopefully some stuff about my major program (she’s the chair of the American Studies program this year); and then she’ll approve my selections. Seems pretty straightforward.

The only problem is, since I’d never really had much idea of what I wanted to major in, I’d never given much strategic thought to my course selections in the past. I took what looked interesting, or what I had to take in order to meet the four-credit requirement (cough, geology). But now, with only a ridiculously short three semesters left at Wesleyan, I have to strategize: how to fit all my requirements into what should be a 12-credit span!

I got my Gen. Ed. recommendations out of the way early. And realistically, my credit analysis looks pretty good. I’ll have 21 credits so long as I pass all my classes this semester, so the required twelve over the next three semesters will leave me with 33—one more than I need to graduate. Dean Brown said I should take 4.5 credits next semester to make up for the half credit I’m not taking this semester, but I think 4 will be enough, credit-wise.

Making things difficult is figuring out how to comply with the AMST majors requirements. Making things even more difficult is my investigation into whether double-majoring in religion would still be possible. It looks like it may not be, but I’m going to sketch out some possible schedules and see if it’s feasible.

Also bugging me is my GPA. It’s by no means bad, though also by no means in Phi Betta Kappa range. Being in the top ten percent of a school like Wes is tough, especially when you’re writing papers instead of doing some quantitative. Grr.

I’ve come to the conclusion that grades are a very bad way of judging someone’s intelligence—even less so, their potential—but whenever I try to shirk some standard of measurement because it’s biased and inaccurate, I always end up back at the thought: Yeah, it’s biased and inaccurate, but the rest of the world still uses it to judge and compare you. Dammit.

Anyway, this writing has provided a probably-not-so-smart break from WesMaps and course planning. And I must get back to that. Good night!

EDIT (11:23 PM): RELI looks like a no-go. To fulfill the rest of my AMST requirements it looks like I’ll need to use five credits senior year (that’s with the year-long thesis credits). That leaves me with three spare credits, and the RELI requirements would require more than three credits. I’d say I could go over the four-credits-a-semester benchmark, but working on a thesis as well as at least two other major research papers for the Comparative Americas courses next year pretty much means I wouldn’t have any time for extra classes, much less upper-level religion courses. Major sigh—no pun intended.

EDIT (11:54 PM): Literally, almost every class I want to take is scheduled in the same time slot as Colonialism and its Consequences in the Americas, which I am required to take. This blows.