Registration is almost like the Christmas time of the school year. Although not available anymore, the yellow course booklets distributed were the registrar’s own version of the Toys ‘R’ Us Big Toy Book. Students went to town on those books circling, highlighting and ranking their favorite classes that they just “had to have.” Except instead of sharing the long Christmas list of wants and needs with our parents we share this college list with our advisors who provide a little more criticism after running a degree evaluation.
Every student here knows that in order to graduate you need to pass 38 classes and obtain 120 credits. Even without completing the math core requirement you can calculate that the requirements are met by taking five 3-credit classes each semester. But apart of those requirements include two natural science classes, two history classes, two religion, two philosophy…the list goes on.
Science is a drag and forget about those challenging history courses that pull your GPA down no matter how hard you search ratemyprofessor.com for that easy class. The intellectual snapshot of college where students enjoy studying challenging subjects, come to lecture halls early for class and read novels beneath the largest trees on campus, is packed away in our high school photo album as we sit through our boring and required calculus class.
We understand that it’s not always possible to take a course you’re interested in. It’s not fair that we skip or fall asleep during the classes that cost us almost $50,000 a year, but the core is what makes Fairfield University unique and each student has the chance to make the best out of each requirement.
What Fairfield COULD do to encourage the English majors to enjoy science subjects and vice versa would be to introduce a variety of core classes. It would be nice to see an interesting science classes like “Brewing 101” or “Chemistry of Perfume.”
The University of California at Irvine offers a course called ‘The Science of Superheroes,’ and a University of South Carolina professor is planning on teaching a course called ‘Lady Gaga and the Sociology of Fame.’ Georgetown University, a fellow Jesuit school, has ‘Philosophy and Star Trek’ Spok vs Descarte doesn’t sound as boring as simply Descarte. Maybe if Fairfield spiced up the core a little bit, not only would their students look forward to meeting the requirements but the professors might enjoy creating a new syllabus.
After all, college is about learning and enriching our lives. Fairfield’s goal is Cura Personalis educating the whole person. That is much easier to accomplish when core classes are exciting and something we want to learn about then something we are suffering through just to get a B.
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