For my last column at N.C. State I’m going to recap some of the things I’ve learned these past semesters and try to give some advice about how to make an undergraduate’s life easier.
Firstly, I recommend the Inter-Residence Council, the Union Activities Board, Student Government and WKNC as ways to learn what is going on around campus; your next best bet —of course —is the wonderful Independent Weekly. I also wholeheartedly recommend Technician.
The three streets for the most happening scenes in Raleigh are Fayetteville, Glenwood and Hillsborough.
The Peer Mentoring Program is extraordinary.
Go to the libraries —all of them, especially the Natural Resources Library, which has weird geology books, and the Design Library, which has beautiful painting and photograph books. Read the successful studying literature at the D.H. Hill and pick up brochures at the Talley Student Center. Explore the top floors of Talley Student Center, including the Gregg.
Explore the campus and the area around it. There are so many wonderful, quiet rooms on campus to study in.
I recommend easy jobs on campus such as library desk positions or those at Carmichael Complex, as well as the Arboretum and the Raleigh museums, including the recently renovated North Carolina Museum of Art.
I had fun exploring NCCU, Duke and Chapel Hill and found religious groups on campus a lot of fun, even for those who aren’t religious. If you are an atheist or if you want to talk more about life’s purpose, I recommend the Self-Knowledge Symposium and the Philosophy Club. Likewise, fraternities and sororities can be beneficial, so long as the emphasis is on academics.
Before taking a course, look at the course distributions and ask your friends about the course itself. Ask friends and friends of friends what they thought of courses. Advisers are trustworthy as advisers, but they are restricted in what they can say. Never take a course without taking its prerequisite. I recommend trying out the classes for a day when exploring the semester before.
The best part of being a CHASS major, though, is the gray area between what one knows and what one does not know. This is a double-edged sword that often worked in my disfavor because professors often did not know how much they were teaching. Considering my grades, I don’t think anyone got away with anything in my liberal arts career.
Distance education courses and introductory courses are a lot of rubbish. If it is easy enough to learn outside of school, do not take the class. If you are shoulder to shoulder with 100 students who feel the same way you do, get out of the class. Of course befriending the professors and meeting them during office hours helps out here, but there is no amount of befriending that can be done with these unemotional-robot professors that will save your grade.
Most majors rehash or cover similar grounds in various classes, but don’t fight this. Rather, use it to your advantage. Political science majors will indeed see Ronald Dworkin in five or six courses, but this has to do with Dworkin’s influence and not necessarily the department.
If it is not fun and easy, or you do not feel a connection with the material, drop the class or switch it to pass or fail.
The challenges one takes on should be honest, obvious challenges, stuff like how to memorize a whole ton of stuff or do a whole lot of reading —not anything obscure or impossible.
