Course Load

[the anglophile]

Sorry for starting two threads in a row, but I just registered for classes and I want opinions on if it's too much. I'm a new freshman starting summer, so I already will have had some college experience (though not much). For fall, I registered for the following:

Preview of Nursing (1)
American Heritage (3)
First Year ASL part 2 (4)
Essentials of Human Nutrition (3)
Developmental Psych (3)
Teachings and foundations of BOM (2)

So, total is 16. But Nursing is a first term class. All of my classes are in the afternoon and I don't have classes on Friday. Is this too much?

[Shrinky Dink]

My first semester I did 15 credits, and my second I did 19 (Don't ever do 19!) Honestly, I think the course load could be fine depending on the type of person you are. I'm at BYUI and in a vastly different major, so I can't personally say what type of load most of those courses have, but if you're willing to keep up with the work, I think you'll be fine, just make sure you are productive on Fridays and don't let them go to waste.

(I'm also jealous that BYU has ASL classes, I was lucky enough to take it here the last semester they offered it)

[Marduk]

Will you be working or having any other obligations?

[Portia]

That seems reasonable to me. I loved afternoons and free Fridays.

[Violet]

Take all this with a grain of salt. And adjust based on how summer goes. If you're not working, it should be very manageable. If you are, it could still be doable. My second and third semesters at BYU I did 16 hours with a language and worked on campus. Of course, it was an office job that sometimes let me do homework when there was no immediate work. Even with those, there were other semesters I had to scholarship contract down to 12 or 13 credit hours to be able to do everything while working.

During syllabus week, calendar out all of your major assignments. See what expectations the professors have. Then take your summer experience and gauge whether you can do it.

But also, free Fridays are one of the best things. Give yourself three-day weekends as often as you can because the working world often doesn't do that.

[the anglophile]

Thanks for your input guys! I'll probably work but I'm trying to find a secretary or desk job where I can work on homework if I don't have anything else to do. I'm worried about giving myself too much free time because I know I'd abuse it. If working gets too hard I can always stop, too, so I guess I'll just see how it goes for now...

[Whistler]

Once I took 18 credit hours, with all the classes Tues/Thurs or only Wednesday. My Wednesdays were filled with homework, and I was pretty sick of classes at the end of the day on Thursday, but otherwise it was kind of nice. Luckily I had a flexible job and I could work a few hours on Mondays when I was done with homework.

[Yarjka]

I also did 19 and survived it (got all A's even, as long as I'm bragging). I'd say 15 is ideal, but 16 is definitely doable. The worst thing about a full course load is finals -- you may have to take three exams back to back to back beginning at 7AM. I am still recovering from that all these years later.

[Violet]

Little known fact: If you have three (or more) scheduled finals the same day, university policy allows for you to take one of them another day.

[Marduk]

My record is 21, which I also did while working full time. I maintained my GPA (which was somewhere in the 3.6-3.7 range) as well. But I literally did nothing else, except church. For the entire semester, it was wake up, go to work, go to school, go back to work, go home and do homework, go to bed, 6 days a week (ok, I didn't have school on Saturdays, but I did still work 10 hours and then did homework, and on Sundays, I did homework both before and after church.) It was doable in the strictest sense of the word. But I discovered there's rarely a point in pushing oneself that hard, at least for those of us in the middle class.

[Zedability]

I took 18 credit hours two different semesters and it was a breeze, even with some classes that are conventionally hard. This semester I have 14.5 and it's my hardest semester. The good news is, by the add/drop deadline I'd figured it out (I was originally at 16.5) so it's at a manageable level. Just don't be afraid to drop something (even if you've already bought an expensive textbook) if it looks like too much.

[Owlet]

I took ASL and American Heritage during my first year (18 and 17 credits my first semesters), and my former roommate was a nursing major, so I feel somewhat qualified to say that your schedule will be cake. Don't even worry. If you're anything like me (seems likely from our conversations), you're right that having too much free time would be a potential problem. No classes in the mornings = way too much lethargy the rest of the day if you sleep in. Hopefully your job will be scheduled regularly for the mornings, or you can arrange with friends to go to the gym, or something like that.

[Yarjka]

Little known fact: If you have three (or more) scheduled finals the same day, university policy allows for you to take one of them another day.

Now I'm wondering if I knew that. I'm thinking I probably did, but I would rather take the finals than go through the process of rescheduling. Who knows what I was thinking, I was young and ridiculous.