So Much to Do, so Little Time

Sure, I have to take five finals next week, three of which are on Monday, but I need to have some fun too, you know? Beaverfest, our annual week of activities right before finals, is this week and there's been so much to do every week. I want to get involved with every activity we have had on campus, but I've been so busy studying and doing final projects that I missed a bunch of them.

The semester is drawing to a close! We have four days of class left (including today), followed by a week of finals (which means three finals Monday, one Wednesday, and one Thursday for me). I really can't believe that I'm almost done with my first year of college. It seems like I'm on course to finish out the year with a GPA of at 3.0, so I'm pretty happy about that too. Now, I just have to play catch-up.

As I mentioned in my post about the New York City trip, I was signed up and ready to go on the school-sponsored trip to Chicago this past Saturday, but unfortunately, I started to feel awful a few hours before we were scheduled to leave, and decided to sit the trip out. I felt fine all day Saturday, but I'm not sure that I would have survived the eight-hour bus ride Friday night. It could have possibly had something to do with the two onion-covered Big Macs I had right before we were supposed to leave (I'm allergic to onions), but I guess we'll never know.

I've always gotten weird looks when I mention that I am a double engineering major. People hear that and think I'm insane; they act like it's the hardest thing in the world. If you really think about it, it's not that difficult. Sure, it's not easy, but a single engineering major isn't easy, either. An engineering major requires you to take about 130 credits of courses. For almost every major, 60-70 of those are general education credits. That's 70 credits left that are major-specific. Engineering majors, however, have a lot in common with one another, like math classes, electives, etc. So let's say that that knocks out another 25 credits. Now, you're left with 45 credits to take that are specific to each major.

If you take one spring and one fall semester every year for four years, you have eight semesters to get everything out of the way. If you take eight semesters to complete a 134 credits major, that's about 16.75 credits per semester. Now we can do the math: if you take the number of credits needed for one major, let's say 130 credits, then you add the major-specific courses from the other major, let's say 45 credits, we end up with 175 credits. If you take eight semesters, that's 21.8 credits per semester. Pretty heavy, but it's doable. If you come in with courses from high school, you've already knocked out a lot (twenty-some in my case).

Well, I just picked up a third major. I think I'm going to be getting some crazy looks now. It's computational cognitive linguistics through Penn State's Bachelor of Philosophy Program, so it's like a very focused, more intensive version of psychology with some computer science thrown in there. Think Google's search engine algorithm. It's really not as bad as it sounds. Not only does it have some overlap with computer science (one of my two engineering majors), but I've already taken the general education credits I need for it, and I have a lot of intro classes under my belt from high school. It will probably only add about 40 or so credits to my current workload, so it's nothing too bad. I would do the credits/semester math, but frankly, it kind of scares me.

The key here is to use all of the resources that you have at your disposal. I'm going to be taking online courses at CCAC this summer to get my last few general education classes completed, as well as to take some more 200-level psych courses. If I don't feel that the course load is too heavy, I "overload" my schedule (which means taking more than 18 credits at a time). I'm fully prepared to do summer semesters as needed to get courses out of the way. If you want to do something, everyone will be here to help you. I was in meetings for five or six hours last week with advisors and other faculty, trying to get everything figured out for the next three years; if you ask for help, it will be provided to you.

Time management is something that I've always been good at, which is great because the ability to balance work, school, and free time is an essential skill. This semester, my ability hasn't been able to quite keep up with all the work I do, however. See, the problem is that I like to be "overworked." I'm a chemical engineering and computer science dual major with a minor in linguistics. When I tell people that, half of the time I get looked at like I'm insane for taking on so many different things, but really, I love that massive amount of work.