the real question: can you sit in a smallish room for 2 hours without falling asleep?

Hey,
I’m going into my first year in life sciences. Are first year humanity seminars
an easy way to boost up my GPA, or is it just going to increase my homework?

it’s funny about seminars.  the only other times you usually see seminar classes at UofT are in senior level courses.  this way the professor can work more hands on to help those academia nuts to develop their ideas through discussion…of course, this principle is a lot funnier when you replace advanced academic discourse with discussions on Lord of the Rings and superacademic 4th years with new kids.  And yet, marks tend to be quite high in the seminars.  It’s been rumored that there might be magic ones here and there where the professors let you select your own mark at the end of the year.

if you look through the list of seminars and find something that interests you, go ahead and take it; the discussion might be a bit simplistic, but you’ll probably have very little reading, easy assignments, and significant participation marks.  if you’re not ready to participate, and you smell bad enough to offend a small room of people, you might want to reconsider.   and please, don’t let your first year fun be spoiled by overly obsessive gpa freakouts: they claim too many….or not enough?…..

aska