Tuesday 13 January 2009

A Note On Course Selections

This has almost nothing to do with my travels or time in Iceland but here it goes:
The reason why I study linguistics and geography is because I love those two things. Good reason to study it, right? I mean, if I hated them I'd go to every one of my classes with my fists clenched and that wouldn't be good, would it?

But the beauty of an arts degree is that I can take so many other courses in random faculties and have a "liberal education" (as long as I'm not in the UK module system).
So I came to Iceland knowing that I would love their geo-umm...--logy and/or geography AND their linguistics. For three years straight I have been taking ONLY linguistics and geography courses even though every chance has been offered to me to take other stuff. The only elective I remember taking is Theatre Appreciation and Icelandic I. The thing about electives is that you have to find a balance of interest and easiness.

This semester I did the best I could to "branch out". My initial timetable included topics in anthropology, sociology, English literature, business and philosophy. But due to really stupid major timetable conflicts and some soul-searching/coin-flipping, I am now back to taking only linguistics/language-related courses and geography courses. The worst thing is, most of them are exact equivalents of the stuff I could be taking at uOttawa, which begs the question, why am I on exchange if I could learn this stuff where I know the credits will be of value for sure? For change of setting, change of perspective. I guess. I guess.

EDIT: Now that I'm mostly settled in my courses, it's amazing how I choose my electives. I meet people the night before who are taking a course or are somehow related to the course and then I decide to take it. Neat, eh? Okay, sorry, that was just a little comment of mine. If you decided to read this I am sorry.

No comments: