College… But Make It Online
Jalen reflects on his experience with online classes, going into his third week of Carleton Online.
Jalen reflects on his experience with online classes, going into his third week of Carleton Online.
Hey everyone, it’s Jalen! And just like I said I would last week, I am going to talk about my experience with Carleton Online.
Contrary to what I originally believed, learning online is not as bad as I thought it was going to be. There’s more structure in some respects, but less structures in others… It’s a very interesting mix of events, especially with the classes that I’m taking this term. I’ll break down my schedule so that it’s easier to understand what I mean.
The three classes (each class is six credits, and the normal amount of credits taken every term is 18—you can take 12 [two classes] or 24 [four classes], but the latter you have to petition for. The Academic Load can be a lot to understand, but you get used to it) I am taking this term are Psychology (PSYC) 218, Linguistics (LING) 115, and Sociology/Anthropology (SOAN) 111.
PSYC 218: Hormones, Brain, and Behavior. I have this class every Tuesday and Thursday, and both days we use Zoom for the entire class period. During those times, some days we take individual and group quizzes, others we get lectures. But for both, we have interactive problem sets we have to work through within our teams, getting the chance to learn from each other in our smaller groups and then sharing with the class and learning in the larger class community as well. We also have a midterm exam, and one big paper due at the end of the term.
LING 115: Introduction to the Theory of Linguistics. This class meets for lectures every Monday and Wednesday, and we have to meet with our class group every Friday to discuss our notes from the past week. During class on Mondays and Fridays, we have lectures that explore the readings from throughout the week, and the PowerPoint the professor created to condense those ideas. On Friday, in the class group, we answer the questions found at the end of the PowerPoint and put those notes into a group google doc so that we all have access to those notes. We also have group papers and individual papers assigned throughout the term.
SOAN 111: Introduction to Sociology. This class is entirely asynchronous, meaning that we have no meetings as a whole class. In fact, the only Zoom meeting I’ve had for this class was a 15-minute meet-and-greet with the professor. We are assigned readings every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and we have to do a 200-word response to the readings, which are due every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday at 1 PM. Then we have a couple papers through the term.
Overall, it’s been different, but it’s not the worst thing. Sometimes I miss, the Carleton community, but I’m also texting and FaceTiming my friends constantly, so they aren’t really that far away.
If you couldn’t already tell, I clearly, obviously, love to read. It’s literally the only thing I do taking all humanities classes. But seriously, I know not only where my strengths lie, but also what I came to college to study.
I mean, I can do math, and while in high school I took Calculus AB and BC, but that’s not really what I want to continue to pursue. I came to college with the intention of majoring in psychology, which is a humanities department, which means I have to read a whole bunch to understand everything I need to. This is how I intend to prepare myself for the rigorous amount of reading I have to do.
I encourage you all to do the same. Even if you all don’t know what you want to do yet—which is more than okay, trying to narrow what you want to study down to one topics is extremely difficult—just starting off with what you’re interested in can help a lot!
That’s enough for this week. I want to thank you all so much for reading this, and I will see you all, not next week, but when we get back to school in January. See you all then!
Jalen
Jalen is a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed freshman with the intention of becoming a psychology major. The fun fact Jalen wants you all to know is that he lives in the Chicago-land area, and even though it snows every April, he is surprised every year. The pattern has not been broken, and he doesn’t think it ever will. Meet the other bloggers!