Tuesday, September 03, 2019

1.4 Class Preview Day

6. The evening brought res hall parties. Lucy and Mac forgot that they were even on the same campus together. Neither of them were much into such social events, but they found themselves having fun nonetheless. There were plenty of snacks and games. Lucy spotted one or two possible friends, and Mac just blended in without thinking much about it. They quickly realized that their own roommates probably wouldn't end up their best friends.

The morning brought the first day of class... sorta. The university had decided to start classes on the Friday before Labor Day, just to dip the students' toes in the water of college. There would be more orientation on Saturday and they would have Monday off. So Friday they walked through their classes.

7. When Lucy had made her deposit--$200--she had declared Environmental Science as her major. One of the distinctives of Highlander University was an "integrated science curriculum." All science majors took either a biology-chemistry combination or a physics-calculus combination their first year. Then they took the other the second year. And the chemistry and physics courses were designed to connect to each other.

So after answering a few questions, an admissions counselor set up a schedule for her. She would start with eight credit hours of the biology-chemistry combination. Then she had the "Themes of the Bible course." Finally she took three hours of Spanish 3 to finish out a language requirement, since she had Spanish in high school. It was a total of 15 hours, a respectable first semester load.

Mac wasn't exactly sure what to major in. Criminal Justice sounded interesting, although he wasn't entirely sure what it was about. It sounded like something a policeman might study. So the admissions counselor signed him up for Intro to Sociology, Spanish 3, philosophy, and, on a whim, ROTC. It was a 13 hour load, a light load for a chill guy to slide into college.

8. The administration insisted that the first day of class be fairly light. There were always professors that wanted to crack a whip to shock the new students into college, but they had been squelched. The day was meant to be more like a preview day. In fact, it was scheduled so that a student could get a taste of almost every class they had, even if it didn't meet on Friday.

On Saturday their FYE groups met to discuss how the first day had gone and to look at their syllabi--the blueprints for each class. There was pizza for lunch and then the first home football game of the year on Saturday afternoon. That was fun, especially since they won. Then Saturday night was yet another res hall social to keep growing the new relationships.

No comments: