08/22/12

Arts Requirements

I promised to do a post on the arts requirement… so here it is :)

So basically:

All students in the B.A. and B.F.A. programs must complete the following Faculty of Arts requirements:

Breadth Requirement

  1. Writing and Research Requirement,
  2. Language Requirement,
  3. Science Requirement, and
  4. Literature Requirement.

Credit Requirement

  1. Upper-level Requirement, and
  2. Outside Requirement.

I will be writing about the breadth requirement first. We are encouraged to complete requirements 2, 3, and 4 – and must complete the Writing component of requirement 1 – in our first 60 credits. Those who fail to meet the first-year Writing component of the Writing and Research requirement before completing 60 credits in their degree will not be permitted to register in courses other than those which satisfy the Writing component of the Writing and Research requirement until this component of the requirement is satisfied.

WRITING AND RESEARCH REQUIREMENT

– In the first 60 credits you take, you MUST complete a 3 credits course on writing. Basically you must either take ENGL 100 or ASTU 150 unless you do CAP or Arts One. From experience, the good ENG 100 courses tend to fill up quickly, but over time most ENG and ASTU classes will probably be full. Also, you can actually check what texts you would be using for ENGL 100 on the English website. This is important because what you would be studying will obviously impact on how well you do. While for ASTU, you can check what topic you will be doing.

– After that, you must complete a research intensive course to complete the research requirement. There is a huge list of courses you can take to satisify this requirement. Most of these courses are offered at the 400-levels. I’ll list a few good courses I personally think would be good to take to satisfy this requirement.
Note: Most of these courses tend to have prerequisites, this means that usually it would be a course in your major that fulfills it. Click here to check out a list of courses that fulfill the requirement.

LANGUAGE REQUIREMENT

The language requirement is actually not hard to fulfill. Many of you might have even fulfilled it already.

In order to fulfil the language requirement, students must fulfill one of the criteria:

  1. have successfully completed a Grade 12 course in an approved language other than English while in secondary school (Those who take IB, will usually have fulfilled this)
  2. write an examination, if they have knowledge of an approved language, but no secondary school or university transcript to prove it
  3. reach the language level taught in any of the following courses LIST OF COURSES HERE

SCIENCE REQUIREMENT

Personally I think this is the hardest requirement to fulfill, that’s cause it is really hard to find a course that you think you’ll do fine it. Especially since I’m a complete noob when it comes to science related stuff. Students must complete 6 credits (two 3 credit courses) in either:

  1. Courses within the Faculty of Science
  2. These courses in the Faculty of Arts:
    1. ASIC 200
    2. GEOB 102, 103, or any other GEOB courses
    3. PSYC science courses (263, 348, 360, 361, 363, 364, 365, 366, 367, 368, 448, 460, 461, 462, 463, 465, 466, 467, 469)
    4. WMST 201 (cross-listed with CPSC 101)
  3. These courses in the Faculty of Forestry: FRST 300, 303, 304
  4. These courses in the Faculty of Land and Food Systems: APBI 244, 260, 311, 327, 328; FNH 200, 250.

I know it sounds weird, but choosing a course to fulfill the requirement will take a lot of dedication! You should research about what you would be taking and search around for the syllabus (google is your best friend)… Make sure you are interested in the topic as well.

Here is a list of courses that are supposedly good for those like me who lack the ability to understand anything sciencey.

  • EOSC 114-6 (Said by many people to be easy), 310-5 (Said to require no science background)
  • ASTR 310-1 I don’t know about you guys, but I think studying astronomy is kind of romantic! (Said to require no science background)
  • WMST 201 or CPSC 101 (same thing) I have heard mixed opinions about this course. Some say it’s very easy while some others say its hard. I think as long as you have a GOOD knowledge on how to use computers, you should be fine :)
  • FNH 200 If you like studying about the technical side of food then this is a good choice. But I would probably never take it as I have forgotten everything I have learnt from IB Biology about food, eg. Dissacharides <– I have forgotten what that means.
  • BIOL 1st year courses… Shouldn’t be that hard right? I think generally if you took a science in high school, then you might do fine in some first year courses on that subject. (Although this doesn’t mean that you can slack off)

LITERATURE REQUIREMENT

Students must successfully complete 6 credits, in the Faculty of Arts, of work in literature. I found choosing courses to fulfill the literature requirement very fun :) There were many courses that I wanted to take!

I’m going to be taking: ASIA 212 and 360B, and ENGL 110. This means that I would have completed 9 credits… Three more than what is required. These are all seen as electives…

BTW. ASIA 360B this year is on the culture of manga and anime :)

Courses that I would consider to take: WMST 224, ENGL 110, 111, 120, 121 (You can only take ONE to fulfill the requirement), All the ASIA courses on the list (they are interesting).

Here is a list of courses to take :)

FINALLY THE CREDIT REQUIREMENT!

This is for the Bachelor of Arts

You must complete a minimum of 120 credits for your degree, some of which must be taken at the upper-level (courses numbered 300 or higher) and a minimum of 72 must be taken from courses taught in the Faculty of Arts.

120 credits total

48 credits from 300+ courses

42 total credits in major, 30 total credits in minor

24 credits outside major/ minor

For a full breakdown on what courses you have to take for your major/ minor please check with the department :) You could always ask me… But I would probably just direct you to the department’s website to check what is required.

 

If you don’t understand anything… please contact me :) I will try my best to explain everything to you!

08/18/12

Choosing Courses… What to choose?

Choosing courses can be extremely overwhelming. It took me over 2 months to choose what I want to take. If you are like me who is very fussy with my courses… I suggest you check out what courses are available weeks before your registration date and create different sets of worklists. This is because it would make it easier for you to register instantly when your registration is open. Sometimes courses might be full and this might mean that you will have to find another time or even another course. That is why making different worklists is a good idea.

(If you need help… I will definitely help you! Please read the bottom of this post)

GOOD TIPS:
– Please please check out the arts requirements. Even Arts students have REQUIREMENTS! If you don’t get it, I’ll be explaining that in another post… CLICK HERE :)

Arts Requirement <– Please click on the link

– Please check out what majors/ minors you are planning on doing, and maybe just maybe take some courses that are required to make your second year less stressful.

Degrees and all

– Save worklists (plural) to make it easier for you to register when your registration opens… I can’t stress enough how important that is!
Some Good Reasons

  • Easier to register when your registration opens (how many times did I say this?)
  • What if? One of the courses you chose the night before suddenly became full and you don’t have an alternative (another worklist)? I was extremely disappointed when I found out that the only ENGL 100 class I wanted to take was full (they were doing POE (I cannot stress how cool he is!), Dracula, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and etc.) Oh yes! Most of the ENGL class do different sets of literature, so be sure to check which texts you would be doing and change your class if you don’t like them! Don’t come running to me if you end up crying because your class is doing something like… Like Water for Chocolate (I did that in IB English) and all the other ENGL 100 is full, I would be like “I told you so!”
  • Also worklists can show you whether the courses you will be taking will clash

– If classes are one hour long, USUALLY they only last for 50 minutes, the same goes for the one and an half hour classes. But sometimes classes might run overtime… What I’m trying to say is that you can put classes right after another class, you do not need to have an half an hour space between. But you should definitely check whether your classes are nearby. I advise you to use Google Map to check how long it takes to walk to your next class. Obviously if it takes more than 10 minutes, you might want to reconsider your class. Or you might not mind being late, if so then do as you please (But personally I wouldn’t as I hate being late).

So… More about me… Read if you want… It might be useful!

Originally I decided on majoring in Psychology and minoring in Anthropology. Fortunately I took IB Psychology HL, this means that chances are that I would be able to get credits for PSYC 100 (meaning that I don’t have to take it). Unfortunately, my registration date was on June, and was around a week before the IB results came out. I didn’t want to edge my bet on that I would get credits for PSYC 100 so I registered for PSYC 100 as I could always drop that later. TIP: EVEN IF YOU ARE SURE THAT YOU WOULD GET CREDITS FOR PSYC 100 YOU SHOULD STILL REGISTER PSYC 100! THIS GOES FOR OTHER COURSES AS WELL! I did this because Psyc 100 tends to get full within a week or so. After my results came out, I was able to drop PSYC 100 :)

The second problem that made me take over 2 months to choose courses is that I didn’t expect to get a 7 for IB History HL. Weirdly enough I was predicted to get a 5, this helped me decide to not major in History, and getting a 7 just added more confusion as I could not decide whether to major in History or not. What does this got to do with first year registering? Well, I don’t know about all of you guys, but I would like to take some of my required courses for my major in my first year instead of cramming everything else for the next few years. In the end, I decided to stay with Psychology and now I’m stuck choosing between minoring in Anthropology or History (I’m still deciding!).

Another problem I had is that since I already have credits for PSYC 100, I wanted to take other Psychology courses. But, all of the other REQUIRED courses required me to be in second year standing, majoring in Psychology (you can declare that in your second year) or have taken PSYC 217 and PSYC 218 (which requires me to be in second year standing), basically my problem is that I’m not in second year standing. I didn’t want to be stuck with one year without Psychology (I didn’t want to forget everything I have learned from IB Psychology), so I took PSYC 208, which is not required.

– I’m kind of zoned out right now… But I will continue adding to this post when I collect my thoughts ;)

Haha. I know I’m writing this a bit late now ;) I hope to the future first years… Reading this would be useful!

PS. You could always ask me questions and all… Just spam me with comments or add me on fb :)