Hi! Do you have any tips on how to manage or organize our required courses? I’m gonna be an English major and Book and Media studies major, and they both have a lot of requirements that I’m not sure how to space them out. Do you think I should be doing some second year courses in third year and stuff (so like, for example doing 2 200-level English courses in 3rd year to free up some space for my requirements for BMS and maybe even a breadth requirement) thank you!!
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hey there,
this is a good question! thanks so much for your patience with my answer.
it’s absolutely fine to do some second year courses in third year, and even fourth year. conversely, it’s okay to take 300- and 400- level courses in second and third year as long as you’re up to the challenge and can meet all the prerequisites. i know plenty of people who arrange their schedules that way, because program requirements can be a bit tough to coordinate.
in terms of other tips i have to manage and organize required courses:
- degree explorer is your friend! it won’t be quite as helpful for scheduling courses, but it is great for keeping track of which requirements you’ve fulfilled and which ones you still need.
- on top of using degree explorer, i like to use colour-coded spreadsheets as well. at the end of my first year, i created a lil 40-cell spreadsheet matrix with one cell per half credit of my degree. then, i colour-coded: i assigned pink to program 1, yellow to program 2, and blue to program 3, and used those colours to fill as many cells as half-credits i’d need for each program. then i went in and used text to fill out the course codes of specific required courses, and bolded the ones i still needed to take. that helped me keep much better track of what i was juggling. i’d show you my lil colour-coded matrix, but it would be blatantly clear what my POSts are, and i value my anonymity.
- when planning out courses in a more long-term way (ie. beyond one semester) see if you can figure out which program requirements will cause you the most distress (lol) and try to space them out well. sometimes, you’ll need to talk to upper-years in your program to see which classes are well known to be difficult. sometimes you can just assess this based on your own strengths.
that’s about all the tips i have — but if you’d like to talk this over further with someone, i’d suggest reaching out to your friendly local registrar’s office. if you’ve never spoken to someone at your registrar before, here’s a guide i wrote that will give you the basics — this is from pre-covid, though, so obviously in-person services won’t be open.
i hope you have a good summer, and best of luck planning your courses!
be Boundless,
aska