{"id":18481,"date":"2016-06-30T12:38:07","date_gmt":"2016-06-30T16:38:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/askastudent.utoronto.ca\/?p=18481"},"modified":"2019-07-20T20:28:57","modified_gmt":"2019-07-21T00:28:57","slug":"four-hundred-levels-of-challenging","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/askastudent.utoronto.ca\/?p=18481","title":{"rendered":"four hundred levels of CHALLENGING"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Hi aska, I&#8217;m going into my 4th year and doing 2 majors (English &amp; Sociology), so I&#8217;ll have to take 0.5 FCE at 400-level for each POSt. Is it a bad idea to take both 400-level courses in one semester? 400-level courses are, I heard, quite intensive &amp; the two topics I am passionate about are offered only in the fall semester. I&#8217;m so torn about this it&#8217;s genuinely stressing me out. The topics for 400-level courses in winter, annoyingly for both eng &amp; soc, just don&#8217;t interest me as much. Thanks!<\/p>\n<p>\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/p>\n<p>hey there,<\/p>\n<p>my friend, i understand\u00a0that feeling. long gone are the days when you could hide behind the 80+ other people in your class if you forget to do a reading. in 400-level classes, you&#8217;re on your own. there&#8217;re only about a dozen of you and you WILL get called on and the professor WILL figure it out if none of you have read the material for that day. it&#8217;s happened to me. and yes, it was\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/askastudent.utoronto.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/ashamedpuppy.gif\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><em>really<\/em>\u00a0embarrassing<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>also, everyone gets really smart, really fast in fourth year. i&#8217;ve looked around 400-level courses and been bewildered by people with whom\u00a0i took 200-level classes suddenly knowing their stuff, making insightful points, having strong opinions about this or that interpretation of a text, and otherwise making me feel like i&#8217;ve got an IQ slightly below <a href=\"http:\/\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/_iirq14WQO4w\/SFxPjvlqv6I\/AAAAAAAAAF4\/3HKHfH-iIJc\/s400\/Picture+9.png\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">that of the average mussel<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>that being said, 400-level courses are also fantastic. best case scenario, you actually get to have an <a href=\"https:\/\/media.giphy.com\/media\/bEvQzecJohmOQ\/giphy.gif\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">interesting conversation with your class<\/a>. it&#8217;s almost like you&#8217;re <em>learning from each other<\/em>. if you can imagine such a thing.<\/p>\n<p>another bonus: assignments are fewer and further between, and you typically have more creative control over them. 400-level courses actually let you come into your own as an academic, research your own interests, and develop projects all on your own.<\/p>\n<p>of course, that&#8217;s all really hard. but it can be fulfilling, academically; you know, if you go in for that sort of <a href=\"https:\/\/media.giphy.com\/media\/12Ihh2T50tSrIc\/giphy.gif\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">baloney<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>on a personal note: i took 3.0 400-level courses in my fourth year (i had a lot of persnickety requirements to fill) and i did just fine (the other 1.5 credits i took were 300-levels). the 400-level ones were challenging, but in a good way. hopefully doing 1.0 FCEs of them will be just the right amount of challenge for you.<\/p>\n<p>i hope that helps???<\/p>\n<p>aska<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hi aska, I&#8217;m going into my 4th year and doing 2 majors (English &amp; Sociology), so I&#8217;ll have to take 0.5 FCE at 400-level for each POSt. Is it a bad idea to take both 400-level courses in one semester? 400-level courses are, I heard, quite intensive &amp; the two topics I am passionate about are offered only in the fall semester. I&#8217;m so torn about this it&#8217;s genuinely stressing me out. The topics for 400-level courses in winter, annoyingly for both eng &amp; soc, just don&#8217;t interest me as much. Thanks! \u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014 hey there, my friend, i understand\u00a0that feeling. long gone are the days when you could hide behind the 80+ other people in your class if you forget to do a reading. in 400-level classes, you&#8217;re on your own. there&#8217;re only about a dozen of you and you WILL get called on and the professor WILL figure it out if none of you have read the material for that day. it&#8217;s happened to me. and yes, it was\u00a0really\u00a0embarrassing. also, everyone gets really smart, really fast in fourth year. i&#8217;ve looked around 400-level courses and been bewildered by people with whom\u00a0i took 200-level classes suddenly knowing their stuff, making insightful points, having strong opinions about this or that interpretation of a text, and otherwise making me feel like i&#8217;ve got an IQ slightly below that of the average mussel. that being said, 400-level courses are also fantastic. best case scenario, you actually get to have an interesting conversation with your class. it&#8217;s almost like you&#8217;re learning from each other. if you can imagine such a thing. another bonus: assignments are fewer and further between, and you typically have more creative control over them. 400-level courses actually let you come into your own as an academic, research your own interests, and develop projects all on your own. of course, that&#8217;s all really hard. but it can be fulfilling, academically; you know, if you go in for that sort of baloney. on a personal note: i took 3.0 400-level courses in my fourth year (i had a lot of persnickety requirements to fill) and i did just fine (the other 1.5 credits i took were 300-levels). the 400-level ones were challenging, but in a good way. hopefully doing 1.0 FCEs of them will be just the right amount of challenge for you. i hope that helps??? aska<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-courses"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/askastudent.utoronto.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/askastudent.utoronto.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/askastudent.utoronto.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/askastudent.utoronto.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/askastudent.utoronto.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18481"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/askastudent.utoronto.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18481\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/askastudent.utoronto.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/askastudent.utoronto.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/askastudent.utoronto.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}