My Class Schedule

During this first term at Carleton, I’ve enjoyed my classes, but I haven’t enjoyed some of the timing. In this post, I’ll tell you about some pros and cons of my current class schedule, and what changes I’m going to make next term!

Observational Drawing

Chronologically, my first class each week is my art class, Observational Drawing. Now, I enjoy this class a lot! I’ve always loved visual art, and experimenting with so many mediums in this class is fun. However, it is scheduled from 8:30-11 on Monday and Wednesday mornings at Weitz, and I live in Goodhue. For those of you in high school, you may be thinking “8:30 isn’t early!” and I know, it’s not as early as some of your classes. But I’m not a morning person, and waking up at 7:30 to walk to breakfast and then trekking to Weitz can be a rough start to the week. Living in Goodhue, the furthest residence hall, makes my morning walk about 0.7 miles (one way). While it is definitely worth it for this class, I think for Winter Term I’ll be scheduling my first class a bit later in the day.

Queer and Trans Memoir

If you don’t know what an A&I is, you can read Defne’s blog about it here! But for those of you who do know, this will make more sense. My A&I is called Queer and Trans Memoir, and it meets 3 times each week: on Mondays and Wednesdays from 1:50-3, and on Fridays from 2:20-3:20. Since all of the A&Is are, well, argument and inquiry classes, they are all discussion-based and tend to be reading-heavy. That’s certainly true for this class, but so far I’ve enjoyed all of the reading. And there’s definitely a lot to talk about! Many of our class discussions tend to roll over into the next class, since everyone has so much to say about the readings. As for the timing of this class, I have no complaints. A solid afternoon class, I usually get my lunch, study for a bit (or take a nap) and then head to my A&I.

Field Geology

Geology! So fun. Also very time-consuming. My geology class meets on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 10:10-11:55, and we have a lab on Thursday afternoons from 1-5 pm. However, since it is a Field Geology course, much of our time is spent off-campus, at different locations around Minnesota, studying real-life rock outcrops. While this is super fun, it means we have to set aside a lot of time for driving there. Some Thursdays, we keep our lab period and just go out from 1-5, but sometimes we’re out in the field from 10:10am to 5pm! Yes, lunch is provided! And, on one memorable occasion, my class had a Sunday field trip from 7:30am until 6:45pm — we were supposed to get back at 5, but there were a few detours to take on the way home. All in all, if you decide to take a field geology course, you should definitely be aware of the time commitment, but as I really enjoy it, I’ll probably be taking many more of these classes!

Looking Ahead

For my winter term, I’m still thinking about which classes I’ll take — likely a language class, but I’m not sure what else. However, no matter what classes, I’m definitely going to try and make the timing of my schedule work for me.