Going out for a sail? I only need one class. Your favorite pastime as a child can now earn you college credit—and at an Ivy League school, no less. Richardson thinks it’s likely the class will be offered in the next year or two. So if you’re thinking about being a part-time or full-time photographer, it’s a great idea to take a college class to improve your craft. How would you like to be cultured, experience history, and learn about Europe? Each semester, professors come up with some pretty cool and ingenious courses that tap into pop culture and fun lifestyles and turn them into serious learning experiences. Extra credit: Frank Ocean isn’t the only musician to get a DeCal course at UC Berkeley: Students can also sign up for The Music, Lyrics and Art of Radiohead, Can’t Tell Me Nothing: The Development of Kanye West’s Artistry, and a Drake class called Started From the Bottom: The Artistic Evolution of Aubrey Drake Graham. We need to remember that life isn’t all about chasing success or fun. Plus, don’t count out the possibility of discovering a lifelong hobby and or finding your future career. Explore new hobbies, learn practical skills, … Magic and Belief in Renaissance Literature, All the Single Ladies: Women at the Edge of Culture and History, Brain Like Berkeley: An Insight into the Artistry of Frank Ocean, Can’t Tell Me Nothing: The Development of Kanye West’s Artistry, Started From the Bottom: The Artistic Evolution of Aubrey Drake Graham, A Day’s Worth of Free Fun for College Students, 100 Years of Courting, Dating & Hooking Up on College Campuses, San Diego State University School of Exercise and Nutritional Sciences, Cannabis and Cannabinoids in Physiology and Medicine, Vanderbilt Law School’s Marijuana Law & Policy, Calling Bullshit: Data Reasoning in a Digital World, Colleges in the U.S. and throughout the world, Short-and-Sweet Netflix Shows for Your Study Break, 10 Little Ways to Treat Yourself During Finals, 6 Easy Microwave Recipes for Hungry College Students. Before you think I’m more confusing than a government tax plan, let me explain why I’m on board the take-fun-classes train. Taking an interesting course is one of the safest places to do something out of the norm. You can reverse this reality by taking a course, like acting, to stretch your comfort zone. Calling Bullshit: Data Reasoning in a Digital World at the University of Washington promises students they’ll be able to provide a “casually racist uncle with an accessible and persuasive explanation of why a claim is bullshit.” Professors Carl Bergstrom from the Department of Biology and Jevin West of the Information School teamed up for ideas about this class, first offered in 2017, even before the term “fake news” was everywhere. Game of Thrones: Re-Imagining Medieval History as an Allegory of the Present, Ice Cream 101: Introduction to Frozen Desserts, see study resources for the class on Course Hero, Nonhuman Subjects: Monsters, Aliens, Ghosts, and Others, study resources for Monsters in Film & Literature on Course Hero, Witch Hunt! You also don’t have to be 21 to take the class. 23 Awesomely Weird College Classes To Enroll In Immediately. Brian Robben is the founder of Take Your Success, a site dedicated to helping entrepreneurs and wantrepreneurs grow a profitable business and reach freedom. Not to say that college students are lazy or that doing something difficult isn’t worthwhile but, with these classes… Are you getting credits for eating ice cream, listening to music, surfing, or dating? “They are all super-fun and educational courses!” says Kevin Straw, director of Mission Bay Aquatic Center. Brian Robben Brian Robben is the founder of Take Your Success, a site dedicated to helping entrepreneurs and wantrepreneurs grow a profitable business and … Taking community college classes is not only impressive to selective colleges, but it also shows that you can handle the workload once you’re a college student. So mysterious. Extra credit: The University of Wisconsin-Madison, which established the first dairy school in the United States in 1890, also offers Ice Cream Makers Short Courses in November 2018 and February 2019. I’d also like to take a European history class since I am a history nerd. For example, I’ve stayed in on countless weekend nights working on my business instead of chugging drinks. Coursera: Find classes like the guitar for beginners at Berklee College of Music and the fundamentals of contemporary art taught by MoMa. (Hopefully hands on a cone or cup.). Here’s the foundation. According to the syllabus, the class will answer the questions, “What does the concept ‘bullshit’ mean to people?” and “How do we decide that something is bullshit?” On the WMPG podcast “USM Now,” Shedletsky said, “Most people chuckle when I mention the word. Most Fun Classes to Take in College. (We’ll spare you the “higher education” play on words, but we still have to acknowledge it. Oberlin’s Experimental College is chock-full of innovative offerings like the Quidditch class, but one other in particular stands out. For in-depth training, visit: brianrobben.com. However, junior Janine Chouinard notes, “Real-life Quidditch has a lot of rules!”. The rise of massive open online courses (MOOCs) has been a tremendous boon for casual, lifelong learners — students of all ages … Take fun classes to break up the schedule, but don't count on them to pave your way into college. With that relative who tries to bait you with hole-ridden political arguments, or that cousin who praises the health benefits of her restrictive diet while enviously eyeing your apple pie? Creative Live : Find art and design classes like illustration and typography, as well a craft courses … However, there are certain situations where it pays to be intentional about having fun. Pick a class … Extra credit: Many cannabis classes deal with law and medicine, such as UC Davis’s Cannabis and Cannabinoids in Physiology and Medicine class and Vanderbilt Law School’s Marijuana Law & Policy. You know those dreaded holiday gatherings? Ocean’s mother and brother both shared tweets about the class. I am probably going to take an introductory class in the following subjects. For a course on how the concept of couples has changed, there’s Modern Love, one of the Harvard College Writing Program’s one-term expository writing courses. Students are also asked to bring in a current event to discuss in class. This class is all about different … Now that you know the theory behind it, it helps to see some examples and how they may benefit you in the short term and long term. My classical music class is where I found this studying gem. If you want to make your college application stand out and show that you’ve used your summers wisely, enrolling in community college classes … Group music classes are an awesome way to unwind and pick up a fun skill you can show off at the end of the semester. “It has over time become a mirror for what we are, or for things we strive to be and haven’t achieved.” The vampire has retained its relevancy because it has changed over time, symbolizing everything from the sexual revolution in the ’70s to the breakdown of the nuclear family in the ’80s to racial identity in the ’90s, he says. But if you’re an amateur ice cream enthusiast—and who isn’t, really?—Penn State also offers Ice Cream 101: Introduction to Frozen Desserts. You’re free to relax and soak in the knowledge of a subject you’re interested in, instead of piling on more knowledge for your major. Usually I’ll be the first person to trade in immediate fun for greater future rewards and success. University students can save money and finish faster with extra summer, night or online classes … “I think it can often feel like those two parts of life are divorced—the latest season of The Bachelor doesn’t seem like fodder for serious discussion. Course description: Maintain the green, build a better sand trap, budget your business, and take field trips to golf courses. (You can also see study resources for Monsters in Film & Literature on Course Hero. When you take a course you know little about, you force your mind to adjust. At Cornell University, students can take a one-credit class in Tree Climbing which will "teach you how to get up into the canopy of any tree, to move around, even to climb from one tree to another without touching the ground." Find your career – More unlikely than likely, but there is a chance you enjoy this fun class to such a degree that you decide to pursue it as your career. And for more fun … Extra credit: Other Harry Potter classes for Muggles include The Legacy of Harry Potter at New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study, and University of Central Florida’s popular Harry Potter Studies. “Our students have approached the subject matter with just the right combination of excitement and seriousness,” says Mahowald. This is a quick list of unordinary classes I came up with that sound like a good time. Cornell University Associate Professor Riché Richardson will offer a follow-up course to her Beyoncé Nation class, which examined Queen Bey’s career and her role in shaping black feminism, plus her impact on gender, sexuality, marriage, family, and motherhood. “I always have tasting and non-tasting activity choices in each unit,” he notes. So beautiful. Your academic semester will get mundane if you’re going through the same type of classes for around 15 weeks. A class that includes beer and wine tastings? The course, one of the university’s First-Year Odyssey Seminars for small groups of about 15­–18 students, “examines the antics of SpongeBob, Gary, Patrick, Squidward, Plankton, Mr. Krabs and the denizens of Bikini Bottom in the context of their real-life counterparts,” says the course listing. Quidditch is a “full contact sport which includes aspects of basketball, rugby, and dodgeball,” but previous sports experience isn’t a prerequisite. When you take a course you know little about, you force your mind to adjust. “We hope that people will gain a greater understanding of Frank Ocean’s artistry and the way he challenges hyper-masculinity and gender politics,” Gill told Berkeley News. Juniors Nigel Law and Lindsay Mahowald, who are teaching the third semester of this class that does a deep dive into SpongeBob SquarePants, met as freshmen and realized they shared a love of the show. “We’ve had people turn in thoughtful essays describing the gay relationship between SpongeBob and Squidward, write original spec scripts that blew our minds, and articulate complicated thematic arguments during class discussions that have made us reexamine our own understanding of the show.” She adds, “We’re so excited to jump back in this fall with what we’re sure will be another crop of ‘good noodles!’”, Extra credit: First-year students at the University of Georgia can learn about marine science, thanks to “the most famous sponge in the world,” according to the description for The Marine Science of SpongeBob SquarePants class. One of the questions on the class application form is “Tell us a fun Harry Potter fact or a fun fact about yourself.”. You know the ones: Organic Chemistry, Quantum Mechanics, Calculus III. The two-and-a-half-day class is open to “ice cream lovers, entrepreneurs, and small-business owners with little or no ice cream manufacturing experience” and includes a mix of lectures and hands-on learning. Many schools will also let you audit courses. Stepanic told EdSurge that he’s always had a fascination with ghosts and skeletons, and he even dressed up as Dracula for his birthday party when he was 5 or 6. It's important to maintain a high GPA, even in the early years of high school, but particularly in core courses. Why GPA Is Queen For Grad School Admissions, How To Figure Out Your GPA On A Weighted 4.0 Scale, How To Raise Your GPA: Three Unusual Ways. The professors make a bold claim: “We will be astonished if these skills do not turn out to be among the most useful and most broadly applicable of those that you acquire during the course of your college education.”. Students even learned a lesson on “time affluence” by arriving to the lecture to find it canceled with simple instructions: Do something that promotes happiness instead. And in this post, I’m convinced students are better off finding fun classes to take in college than not (as long as it doesn’t mess up their graduation timeline). So I challenge you to focus on looking for fun in uncommon areas. Would You Live Off A Dollar A Day To Accomplish Your Dreams? Open-ended questions don’t take any planning. “Witches represent so many things in American history, literature, and culture!” says the course’s professor, Christine Payson. University of San Diego students can enroll in Sailing, Surfing, Wakeboarding, Stand-Up Paddleboarding, and Windsurfing at Mission Bay Aquatic Center through USD’s education recreation department. Pottery classes are also under the art umbrella, so don’t forget about clay or glassblowing. Chouinard is instructing the first Quidditch course with Obliviators co-captains Haley Gee (a junior) and Isaac Hoffman (a senior) at Oberlin’s Experimental College (ExCo), a student organization and college department that sponsors for-credit courses taught by Oberlin students and community members. Extra credit: At Amherst College in Massachusetts, students can take Witch Hunt! (Anyone who didn’t pick this major definitely picked the wrong major. (Most of these classes, if not all, are offered at every major university.). Curious to learn more? Or ignore classical music and study rap or pop music, it’s your call. For example, one week the class examines media representations of the “career girl” and explores sex and sexual harassment in the workplace through Bridget Jones’s Diary, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and Jane the Virgin. While some might see Speech class below and place more importance on it, I think it’s essential to ensure the ideas in your head actually make sense before you let them come out of your mouth.Now, when I say I’d force students to take a logic course, you might think I’m talking about symbolic logic. Want more strategies to make your life easier in college? After teaching a class on single women in 19th-century literature, Lauren Wilwerding found that the reading discussions often led to conversations with students about gender and marital status in today’s culture. So she created a new course “focused on contemporary issues,” All the Single Ladies: Women at the Edge of Culture and History, where students examine the unmarried woman in literature, from William Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew to Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own to Ann Patchett’s State of Wonder. Sign us up! Take something for fun and enjoyment because you always wanted to learn more about a certain subject or because it helps you relieve stress; Whatever you decide, don’t just throw your semester away on Walking 101 or Breathing 102. At the Gallatin School of Individualized Study at New York University, the class name stands out among the list of descriptions: 100 Years of Courting, Dating & Hooking Up on College Campuses. They also have a ton of language learning courses available. A well lived life has balance between the two. Those benefits, mostly the latter two, offer an incredible upside for no downside. You'd just pay for the class, and go to class, and it would be fun, and there would be no academic credit involved. Cool dude. In 2017, NMU’s Medicinal Plant Chemistry became the first program to offer a 4-year degree; student Alex Roth told The Washington Post, “When my friends hear what my major is, [many of them] laugh and say, ‘Wow. “The tastings in the classroom are more free form, and I provide the direction,” Waters says, adding that they’re held off-campus. The result is The Real Game of Thrones—Culture, Society, and Religion in the Middle Ages, at Harvard University, where Kirakosian is now an associate professor of German and the Study of Religion. You’re going to get a degree growing marijuana.’ But it’s not an easy degree at all.”. “The field trip to the Salem Witch Museum is definitely a highlight!” Payson says. For some of you, your class schedule looks like three major classes and two minor classes, every semester, until you graduate. And then a few weeks before the first class day, Miami cancelled the course in order to reconstruct the horse facilities. For college credit. What’s surprising about this class, taught by Stanley Stepanic, associate professor in Slavic Languages and Literatures, isn’t its popularity but that Bram Stoker’s Dracula isn’t required reading. It’s for the same reason that reading is so beneficial. Extra credit: Laurie Santos’ Psychology and the Good Life class, nicknamed the “happiness class,” was the most popular Yale University class ever, with nearly 1,200 students taking it last spring. Jill Segerman’s Happiness class at Xavier University in Cincinnati doesn’t promise happiness, but the course has students try to define what happiness is and how to achieve it. When asked what dating has to do with philosophers like Plato and Aristotle, she says she sees conversations about dating fitting in with the big questions posed by her classes, such as, “How should I live my life?” “What kinds of relationships help me to become the kind of person I want to be?”, When was the last time a class made you happy? If you keep reading, you’ll notice the example list below easily translates to a list of hobbies. And if you don’t believe me, I’ve personally known a good amount of students accidentally discover what they want to do in life from an elective course. Watch the video of the lecture Stepanic delivered when he visited Course Hero headquarters in 2017, or see study resources for the class on Course Hero. ), Northern Michigan University doesn’t just offer a cannabis class but a marijuana major! Only you know your unique interests and what you would consider is a fun class, not me. Discovering a hobby you love would certainly be worth this opportunity on its own. 4. The Dracula class at University of Virginia is so popular that the wait-list once had 1,600 students. Tweet. “Isn’t it partly our job [as professors] to use that interest and go deeper?” she said to TIME. This course asks, “What happens when society expands the options for living and loving? In College Life you'll find fresh tips, videos, and expert advice to help you graduate confident and prepared. Maybe taking a fun elective course snowballs into a lifelong hobby. Now he can use his dancing skills on nights out and at weddings, which comes in handy. Maybe taking a fun elective course snowballs into a lifelong hobby. You won’t need a flying broomstick to play Quidditch for the Oberlin Obliviators, the liberal arts college’s club sport team. There are some courses I might audit for fun. Although the employability boost is minimal at best, … The good news is, you can have these questions answered at universities across the country—and get credit for it. Student Life. Psychology also made it on this list of. Take College Courses While Still in High School. “That is definitely a job avenue now that the legal cannabis industry is coming to Ohio,” she told local news channel WLWT. French pop is pretty awesome, too, and knowing French makes listening to Aznavour, Jacques Brel and MC Solaar that much more fun. Listening to Beyoncé? Just choose a program or course that interests you, and check the noncredit schedule for a class … Brain Like Berkeley: An Insight into the Artistry of Frank Ocean, a Berkeley DeCal (Democratic Education at Cal) student-taught course, was created by second-year students Preya Gill and Deborah Chang, former roommates who bonded over their love of Ocean’s music. Tison Pugh, the professor who teaches at UCF, told UCF Today that he was initially dismissive of the series. Yet there are plenty of careers available for those who are knowledgeable about beer and wine, not including a bartender. The class will be offered again in Spring 2019. One way to ensure you don’t skip the gym is to register for a weightlifting or exercise course. Want to know the insider information behind the Stanford Prison Experiment and what makes your parents act the way they do? You can gain this and more from a classical music class. Seminars for the 12-week course include Introduction to bullshit, Spotting bullshit, Statistical traps, Big data, and Refuting bullshit. The first assignment is a “bullshit inventory,” for which students “keep track of [their] encounters with bullshit over the course of a week.” According to the professors, “The world is awash in bullshit,” and the 160 students signed up this fall are encouraged to turn a critical eye to guilty parties such as politicians, “startup culture,” advertisers—and even higher education. Extra credit: The University of Arizona’s College of Social & Behavioral Sciences offers an English class called Nonhuman Subjects: Monsters, Aliens, Ghosts, and Others, which examines how “‘monstrous’ symbolic figures in our chosen literary works reflect historical and ideological changes.” At the University of Pennsylvania, coursework for Monsters in Film & Literature can include books by Mary Shelley and Octavia Butler and film viewings of Nosferatu, 28 Weeks Later, and Alien. The class is fun as well; one student told Course Hero that he and a friend who also took the class play a game in which they try to spot the most likely vampire in a crowd. My housemate took a ballroom dancing class senior year. “The big takeaway is that the vampire is an expression of the human species itself,” Stepanic told EdSurge. Your college will require you to take core undergraduate courses, which can either become very useful for your future or a series of generic lectures that you will not find the slightest bit beneficial. If you are one of the 80 percent of students working, night classes will give you the flexibility you need to meet all of your professional and academic responsibilities. Then she started watching the show. Penn State College of Agricultural Sciences’ annual Ice Cream Short Course, which takes students “from cow to cone,” draws ice cream professionals from small manufacturers to big names like Baskin-Robbins, Ben & Jerry’s, and Häagen-Dazs. I get my first aid and CPR certifications through classes offered at the community college, though of course those are not part of an academic department. “It sort of gradually dawned us that not only were our references turning into interesting discussions but that plenty of our peers likely had experiences and opinions that would make them even more interesting,” says Law. There are many reasons why you might want to take a single class or a few classes at Spokane Falls Community College (SFCC). You can gain this and more from a classical music class. Los Angeles City College’s Anthropology of Religion, Magic and Witchcraft explores “mythology, symbolism, shamanism, traditional healing, altered states of consciousness, magic, divination, witchcraft, and the question of cults” across cultures. Some students ask “What are some easy online college classes?” Art appreciation is not just an easy and exciting class but also one that you can take remotely. A former OSU student who took a previous version of the class recalls “lots of people signed up on the promise of weekly wine tastings” but it was “a rather serious course.” Quite a few didn’t make it past the first week, he says, adding “Upside: The rest of us learned a lot about wine.”. I do believe symbolic logic is useful, as it helps people to le… When Racha Kirakosian taught medieval literature at the University of Oxford, “students would say, ‘Oh, this is like Game of Thrones.’ And I would say, ‘Well, if anything, it’s the other way around,’” she told The Harvard Crimson. Oberlin’s Experimental College (ExCo) program let them test the theory. Rest assured, Harry Potter fans, there’s also a Snitch in the game. I want to take classes for fun, I love knowledge. Discovering a hobby you love would certainly be worth this opportunity on its own. For real, it’s hard to become a better artist without an art teacher. Extra credit: In other Ivy League Game of Thrones news, Dartmouth College’s fall course catalog includes the English course Game of Thrones: Re-Imagining Medieval History as an Allegory of the Present, in which, according to the course description, “class participants will devote scrupulous interpretive attention” to the works in George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire, and to the adaptation of that series by David Benioff and D. B. Weiss as the show Game of Thrones. Classes held in the evening ensure even students working a fulltime, 8-to-5 job can fit an education into their schedule.If you are one of the students working a part-time job, taking your classes can give you the flexibility to pursue other activities. ), Extra credit: At Clark Honors College at the University of Oregon, students can study Skateboard Culture and Popular Culture, a class about the origins of surf and skate culture and its impact on fashion, music, and lifestyle. Acting is also perfect for releasing stress during the day before or after you have your major classes.
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