When I was a senior in high school browsing college websites, I was fascinated by the unique classes universities offered. Instead of your general calculus or English courses, you could take specialized classes on the most niche subjects. And so, I had this idea that college was just that; taking a bunch of random classes for fun.
This, of course, was not the case. There are university and college requirements, and then all the classes you must take for your major. The classes you can take for the few spaces you have left after this are usually constrained by time conflicts, unmet requirements and an already heavy course load. Thus, we are faced with the decision to fill this whatever class we can find. But, sometimes we find a class that fits with your schedule and sounds fun. But we get scared because now one you know has taken it before, it’s on an obscure topic, and it is nowhere near your area of study. So, what do we do then? If you ask me, I say take it. And I am speaking from experience.
When I was registering for classes this semester, I was looking to find some classes that I had no time conflicts with, met some requirements, and still had spots left. As a sophomore with a relatively bad registration slot, this was a very hard task. I came upon a 40000 level class in the Theology department that required departmental approval for registering, but met the literature requirement I was missing. I registered for another course, but I kept thinking about that one. Based on the description, it seemed to delve into a bunch of interesting topics and were completely unrelated to my major. I finally decided I wanted to use this semester to expand my areas of study beyond my major classes and sent an email to the department. With no knowledge of the class beyond the description, I decided to take a risk and enroll. After all, I could just switch to some other class once the semester started.
I went in that first day only knowing one person in the class and having no idea what to expect. The professor came in, went over general aspects of the syllabus and his instruction method, and then gave us a glimpse of the kind of material we would be reading. After around 20 minutes, I was hooked. It has been a month since the semester started, and I can not only say it is my favorite class this semester but probably my favorite class I have taken at Notre Dame. Every week I look forward to those two 75 minute periods, and reading the assignments feels like something I would willingly do in my free time. Last week I wrote my first paper for it, and I swear I had never had so much fun on an assignment. When I proofread it for the last time, I was so excited I just wanted to keep re-reading it. I may be a bit of a nerd, but I promise that does not happen often.
Your holy-grail class might be completely different from mine, but the principle still holds: take a risk on it. It might be a class at a time that is not of your preference or you might have to take it without any of your friends, but if you are really passionate about exploring what it is about, I say take it. College allows us to take classes on very specific historical periods or weird skills that we learn to absolutely love. May my story serve as the inspiration you need to take more risks next registration, you may even find your next favorite class.
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