As a Dutch student im so fascinated by how the Northern American school/uni systems work. In The Netherlands you pick a study and all the courses are already chosen for you. Sometimes you have some free room to chose a subject, but most of the time you can pick out of two (maybe four) options. It baffles me you can get a valid degree with all these different subjects. Currently i'm doing a premaster in literature and i didn't get to chose anything XD
Specifically in Canada, universities fall under this. Colleges (which are a more hands on approach) are more similar to the Netherlands. I’m studying library technician studies, and I only pick one class a semester out of my core classes
portugal is the same way! on the one hand i can appreciate having that structure in my life because i'm pretty indecisive, but it does bum me out that i can't take classes that are outside my field of study :(
Same in Brazil. When I was studying psychology, all the classes were related directly to the major and there was maybe a tiny little wiggle room. I left for medical school (direct entry here) and it’s the same, you can sometimes chose your rotations, it’s very rare, but that’s it. Don’t even get me started in the USA major and minor degree. Can’t wrap my head around that.
In Mexico we have to pick in the last year of the High School equivalent, if you wanna go into the TEM part of STEM (or either Chemistry or Physics) you continue with the relevant classes, if you don't you're done with math and take the Humanities route which can also end in Med School. None of those paths can be skipped, you're never actually given the option to mix and match between them (I did mix but had to ask the principal and talk to all the relevant teachers before they let me) and I think choosing a specific branch is a requirement for even applying to the most common careers
As an anthropologist who spends A LOT of time in research, this video made me chuckle. I think every anthro major has at least one professor like the one you mentioned. That said, the field of anthropology is so much more than primates and archaeology, and if you ever get the opportunity to take another anthro course I'd encourage you to check out linguistics or cultural anthropology (which is what I pursued for my graduate and doctorate degrees; english was my undergrad major).
I second this as well - I studied archaeology, but minored in physical anthropology. Primates are such a small part of anthropology as a whole - there’s cultural anthropology, linguistic anthropology (which might be more up your alley) etc. the list goes on and on!
It is mandatory in my university to take an introduction to Anthropology course ( Bio, Psyc and Cultural Anthropology ) and also 6 other subjects (also mandatory) in one semester. Cultural anthropology was super interesting and also the only subject which i really liked. 10/10 defiantly.
as a greek person, when you spoke about your classical studies classes i got so freaking excited ahh- it's amazing seeing people from aboroad appreciating our culture 💙love you & your channel so so much
As an Italian university student it's so interesting and fascinating to have a look at how the Canadian university system is organised and how it works because it's SO different from the Italian one! I love that as a student you can pick different subjects that are not necessarily in line with your major, and even the idea of having a major and a minor is so cool and out of the world for me ahahah. In Italy when you choose your university path you'll take courses that belong to that area and mostly they're already chosen for you, so you don't really have the opportunity to explore other subjects and delve into different areas of knowledge, which it's a shame in my opinion. At the same time I think that the system is structured in such way to guarantee a certain coherency to your uni career i guess? Very interesting to see the comparison. Also, it was so nice to see your enthusiasm about classical studies because I studied Latin and Ancient Greek language+literature+history in high school (for 5 years) but I left it behind when I enrolled in Law School at uni and I miss it a bit :') Last comment I swear but I wanted to say that your Italian accent and vocabulary was good for someone who has stopped studying the language years ago (I assume)!! You almost got it with rusty= arrugginita eheh good video as always emma
Man, I miss university! Sitting around discussing big ideas. Best time of my life. I definitely remember the growing pains of switching from high school writing to college writing. I was a history major and political science minor. One of my favorite courses was History of Islam (I took it in London!) and also Russian History. I took Latin as well and loved it! Congrats on impending (?) graduation! These videos are amazing!
Man that makes me happy to hear. I am in a STEM field and so are all of my friends and university is anything but fun for us. Some moments are interesting, such as group studies, but majority of it is just doing the same things on repeat. ISTG there is no such thing as a fun STEM field. The social studies and linguists are always having a blast in my uni, while the rest of us are suffering XD
As somebody who also loves to study but already has uni days past them, I love discovering new areas of study on coursera and edx! I got a degree in biology and now I'm taking courses in linguistics, geopolitics, engineering, philosophy and more
This was so insightful! I'm an English lit student also ( Stockholm), and currently doing a Gothic lit course.. yes it's as amazing as it sounds. Today we discussed the vampire as a symbol of disruption to the chronology of history/time. And touched on male vs female vampires. Last term i did a love and it's discontents course which was also great. I'm so intrigued by classical studies and philosophy, though I'm afraid it's going to dissapoint me somehow. Haha. Great to hear your thoughts on it!!
Yes labs were dreadful for me too! There are a ton of great professors and some that should NEVER teach! 😆 The meme chat! My fave classes were ones on ancient Greek and Roman culture! Best advice I can give for fledgling college and university students is to try not to miss any assignments. Helps with your GPA. Great video idea Emma, YOU are practically a lit. Professor here on UA-cam! 🥰🎓
Hi Emma! Italian girl here! You said it right the first time: rusty= arrugginita. 👏The method your professors used was the best one. I've been studying foreign languages all my life (in high school and university, I graduated in translation) and even if it can be scary and embarrassing you have to talk and talk and chat and chat to learn a foreign language. It should be a very active process. It is soooooo nice and heartwarming to hear you speak my mother tongue. Well done❤
I’m getting my degree in Fine Arts (illustration specifically) but I discovered a love for Art History while I’ve been in school, so I decided to get a minor in it. But now I only have one Art History class left for the degree and there are SO MANY topics I still want to take. I feel like I just left the survey courses and now I’m almost done :(
I absolutely loved this review! I was so scared of coming into college not knowing exactly what I wanted to do but was afraid of sticking to something I didn’t love. I ended up following my heart and committing to biology (I’m really passionate about it but I understand how people wouldn’t be. It definitely is overwhelming) I love that you had the courage to try so many different career choices. Wish I saw this before college 😅❤
I study Accounting with a Japanese minor. I've taken courses in Russian and German, and in HS, I took Latin, French, and Spanish. So, I totally understand your excitement about language courses!! I absolutely loved my Spanish linguistics class, and I plan on taking Spanish dialectology. The variety of dialects and learning them is one of my favorite things about Spanish. I also studied abroad in Germany last summer, and took courses on German culture, music, and the language. I'd love to hear more about your language learning journey!! My freshman year I took a course called "Confucianism and Samurai Ethic" which was a super cool course about the history of confucianism in Japan, and how it created Samurai ethics (such as harakiri) and the culture and morality of Japan as a whole. I took another course called "Memory and the American Civil War" which was a dive into how the American north and south have taught the civil war differently and still teach it differently to this day in schools. The north is taught that the cause of the civil war was slavery, and the south is taught the cause was state's rights. Very fascinating. I took educational psychology, which was super interesting, a lot of psychologist theories on childhood development.
The interesting thing is that both of those reasons are technically about slavery. States' rights = the right to own slaves whether or not the South patently admits it.
The psychology professors teach us, psych students, how to make difficult tests. I literally spend half of my degree studying that. So it only makes sense that we are then subjected to taking hard tests. Speaking of which, I am taking the last exam of my Psych Masters degree tomorrow and I should be studying right now. lol
Your italian is still quite good👏"rusty" is "arrugginita" btw😉 It always makes me smile how you say "ciao" at the end of your videos🥰 Your channel is one of my absolute favourites, you personality is so calming and charming😘 hugs from Italy!
thank you THANK YOU!! I feel so comforted as a second-year Biology major who's finally decided to switch her major to Literature next semester. Everything you said about science classes was so relatable - so many professors are so smart, but do they know how to teach? absolutely not. Also there's no creativity whatsoever when writing academic texts, there's only one singular truth and if I don't know it I have already failed. Partly because of those reasons, my longing for creativity and my huge love for books, I'm finally ditching biology (ALONG WITH ALL THE MANDATORY CHEMISTRY, STATISTICS ETC. THAT I DIDN'T EXPECT TO COME WITH IT smh). Despite getting excellent grades my soul is not fulfilled at all by majoring in science... I love you, you're my comfort person and my favourite youtuber
I majored in Microbiology and minored in Chemistry for my undergrad, and had a similar experience with my intro bio course. My professor had zero patience for us naive 18 year olds and openly told us that it was a “weed out” course, and that we should expect half of us to drop out by the end of the semester. I stuck with it and got the worst grade of my entire undergraduate experience (probably because the final was 40% of our grade and was 150 questions multiple choice with a surprise essay at the end), but I will say that I’m glad I kept my major. The upper level biology courses were absolutely fantastic and I’m now in a Masters program for Public Health. My goal is to be an infectious disease epidemiologist! But I absolutely agree with your point that some of the smartest people just CANNOT teach worth a darn 😂
I found schools didn’t suit me but learning is my passion, so - after eventually convincing my parents! - I’m studying A-levels (British high-school level equivalent) but on my own! I do have zoom meetings once a week with a teacher from each of my subjects to check how I’m getting on, but it’s mostly just me. I absolutely love it, it gives me the flexibility and time to explore my interests without feeling like I’m being talked down to or simply an object in a system like it was at school. The only downside is I’ve only got an hour a week to talk to someone as interested in each subject as I am, I think clubs are something I miss from school. I’m doing four subjects, Sociology, Philosophy, History and English Literature, all of which have been even better than I could have hoped. So, in order! First, I’m doing the sociology of education at the moment, the second non-optional module is crime then the optional modules I’ve gone for are the sociology of health and probably my second optional module will be global development - it’s been excellent, I’ve really enjoyed it and my tutor is so so kind, but I’ve found A-Level probably still isn’t quite deep enough for me, there’s still a lot of insight but a lot of it feels a little *too* intuitive and obvious? Philosophy I occasionally have the same problem with that you do, particularly with philosopher Immanuel Kant, who feels like he comes up with convenient ways of justifying his intuition and pretending that his justification is “perfect rationality” but even then, i have a good time getting to scorn him in essays and try to trip him up with his own logic. History I think I made the best module decision of my life, I’m studying the Wars of the Three Kingdoms (including the English Civil War) - I am 100% sure most people would find that subject matter dull, but I find that everyone is just modern enough that I can understand some of their viewpoints and not others, it’s a wild ride! Getting to study this on my own has been such a benefit, I’ve had the time to do everything from reading the letters of Charles the first to visiting Hampton Court Palace and spending hours talking to the staff. Talking of which, there was a nice tie in with English Literature, the talk that day was “plays and politics: the english court & drama in the 1600s”. I got to talk to this very nice lady for hours about both the history of how plays were staged at hampton court, as well as the meaning of tragedy (which is the course I’m doing at A-level english lit, along with social & political protest writing). We spoke about Aristotle & hamaertia vs Jan Kott’s idea of a “grotesque” play regarding King Lear, whether tragedy should be didactic or open to interpretation, institutional critique vs character flaws, why her favourite play is Aphra Benn’s the Rover etc. It was such a good day!
I started as a biology major thinking I was going to be a physical therapist … that quickly changed when I got to college level chemistry and could not pass the class! I dropped it and switched to Social Studies education and now I’m a teacher! Totally opposite direction and I’m so happy with my decision! This is a message for everyone, change your major if you don’t like it! College is too expensive to be miserable!!!!
I don't agree with this but it is a valid point. Me and all my friends are in STEM, and while we are struggling with the studies, the thing is, we did not enter these fields with the hope of it being easy-peasy. We went here because we believe that if we put all the effort during early adulthood, we would have a better future. If you are content with a smaller pay and enjoy easier fields, go ahead and change it, but staying for the sake of a better paying job is also so much worth it. I would say most STEM fields are worth it except for Medicine because that field is trash. The rest of them start hard but after some time they become fun, since u know how they work!
Thank you so much for this. I'm getting close to having to choose what to study and it has been a very unresolved process of choosing between what I love and what can amount to a consisteny and well paid job. The whole thing is just very interesting and helpful to me. Don't change, because this sort of stuff you do is always flourishing with honesty and lack of concealment which is nowadays rare, especially on the internet.
This was so relatable, loved hearing about your experiences, Emma! University can be tough for sure. I changed my career twice because I truly didn't know what I wanted to do. Now I'm studying Literature and Creative Writing, and I love it ❤️ Congrats on graduating!
I ran away from Environmental Sciences and now I'm studying Languages (English and German) ... I guess we are all living the same life . What I really hated of my classes in Environmental Sciences was that as you said it was all memorization. It's a pity that they don't offer to students classes about Environmental movements history or Philosophy of Nature etc... I would really appreciated at that time.
i’m a junior in high school and i’ve been thinking a lot about college lately, so i’m so excited for this video!! your academia(??) videos alone could just about convince me to be an english major emma, so i’m so glad to get your opinion on other subjects too! ❤
The most fascinating class I took in college was probably physiological psychology. As a class that combined psychology and neuroscience, it was probably the most difficult class I took in college. It had a ton of reading. I mean there would be giant packets that would thump when you dropped them on the table. I loved it, though.
Super insightful video! I also go to Western and had a less than ideal time in biology (in that exact class) and I might be able to potentially guess which prof you had based on your description lol. I love the notion you share that it's okay to not know exactly what you want to do in university - I've had to learn that the hard way through pushing myself to do a minor in pharm when I hate uni level chemistry! Also, as a psych major, you are absolutely correct about the multiple choice exams and I don't know how I haven't lost my mind already :)
As a quebecer, I love hearing about your university classes because we have a level between high school and university where we would cover all these `extra` subjects that aren’t annexed to our main undergraduate degree. While most undergraduate degrees do have some classes outside the field, they aren’t that many. It a three years where you are more focused on your area of studies. Through the years, I have gathered up certificates (same amount of credits as a minor I reckon) in Art history and in Accounting (I love both as odd as it might sound). I have taken classes in museum studies which were amazing, as well as some in ethnology which were far more boring than I had hoped. I think my worst classes were political science- which was surprising since I have loved them so much in Cégep. But I had never been classes where I thought to myself ` Wow, do I not care about any of this.` I am currently doing a bachelors degree in economics. I do not think I will ever be done with school. I enjoy it so so much. And lucky for me, I have a very large scope of subjects which fascinate me and I could very well never be done with it :P
University is such a wonderful place if you want to learn what you are truly interested in. This is especially important when you face harder parts of the education and i do really recommend to try out higher education! pro tip: read some of the course litterature in advance to get a hum if you want to study a certain subject, for me personally, i read alot of the sociology/social work litterature in advance and fell in love with it and once i started my education officially i have never felt more sure and happy that i get the chance to pursue my dream education =) never stop learning folks!
i got my bs in psych and can confirm that all of the multiple choice questions are like that 🙃 you get used to it, but it never stops hurting ☠️ it‘s also so wild how much a professor can affect the quality of a class. i took a psych human sexuality class and it was so rewarding, specifically because of the prof. i love hearing about other people‘s academic experiences so thank you for sharing! ❤️
I started watching your channel a long while ago, I don’t even remember how many years back it was. I was in high school back then, and now I’m in my first year of uni as an English major :3 Thank you for making such helpful and inspiring videos, they’re half of the reason why I’m an English major atm.
i had a similar experience in terms of firstly pursuing one degree and then changing it to what i feel like my soul loves the most: i started studying astrophysics but after some time i realised that even though i loved astronomy a lot, unfortunately i couldn't become a scientist as good as i wanted to be so - i re-entered uni and started studying biology💜 in particular i specialise in cytology/histology and I'm too very very happy i made this decision ☺️
Before the pandemic I was a classics major and I absolutely loved it, especially all of the history classes I was taking (and I have the same Greek textbook as you!) but I wasn’t able to even complete a year bc of obvious reasons but also I was facing so much burnout and just a lot of mental health problems. I really hope that one day I can go back to school and finally get my degree but I’ll need to go through some serious progress to get there
Your feelings about the philosophy course are exactly what makes me question my choice to be a philosophy major lol. Like, there are a lot of concepts we talk about that are really interesting and feel relevant, but there are also a lot of topics that have me thinking "Why does this matter?" Sometimes my professors will just introduce a really confusing and obscure topic that literally no average person will ever think about and that you will likely forget about once the term is over.
Lol I had the same experience with biology. I had to take it to fulfill my core requirements but I took visual art and art history classes for my major, and those class sizes were like 50 at most. My bio class was like 200 it was crazy. But my school offered a lot of cool visual art studios!! I've taken improvisational quiltmaking, natural dyeing for textiles, intaglio printmaking, lithography printmaking, and traditional Japanese woodblocking printmaking (mokuhanga). I was an art history major/visual arts minor, honestly I enjoyed the art courses more, but a lot of the art history classes I took were fun too. Special study in Rembrandt's life/work, ancient to modern Korean art, the art of Buddhism, and my personal favorite, American art from 1900-present! It was really interesting to see how the two halves of my course load interacted with one another--while I was in the Rembrandt class, I was also taking intaglio, and I got to learn about Rembrandt's etchings while also making my own.
Omg I was so excited to hear you went to Western! I’m going to Western for the same degree as you and I’ve watched a ton of your uni videos and I’ve always wondered what school you went to because you made the program sound so great. Now I’m even more excited for uni.
I studied biology and loved most parts of it (except the first few semesters, where you had to survive chemistry, maths etc). For my masters degree, I changed university and it was awful! I was the only woman there and had a tough time. Luckily I could write my final thesis in bioethics (where I was the only student taking the course! :D) and absolutely loved it. I'm working in a completely unrelated field now, but I'm glad that I did finish the course, because I think you learn so much on the way. And sometimes I think I want to go back to uni, because I love learning as well. But ofc you can do that outside of uni as well, it just takes a bit more self-discipline and at the end you can't show a degree...
I know that feeling of not knowing what you want to do with your life so well. I dropped out of media science after one semester and somehow (?) became an occupational therapist. I'm currently taking courses to specialise in hand therapy and I would never have thought I would find it so fascinating - like how everthing in the human body is connected and just makes sense! I also love that I can practise everything I learn on my patients immediately (they're alway very eager to hear all the fun facts and be my test subjects it's very cute) So yeah I haven't been this much in love with studying ever and I get to help a lot of people!
As someone who got a degree they hate (due to family pressure) and now, due to having spent so long studying an uninteresting subject (to me, of course), don't even know anymore what I exactly enjoy (I just remember that I loved biology and history in high school), do you have any advice in how to find something you truly like?
Okay but a book recommendation list themed around this video. Bio? A book that gave you an out of body surreal experience and / or you found deeply challenging, for example.
When I hear about the educational system outside of Romania I just want to cry... 😢 We live in different worlds! P.S.: I studied Economics in agriculture which sounded very interesting but I hated it!
Really enjoyed this video. I'm a 4th year student at the University of Connecticut studying neuroscience and psychology, but my heart rests in literature.
I loved classical studies in high school! I nearly went on to study that and anthropology, but ended up taking a few gaps years and now I’m studying Veterinary Nursing 😄 this has made me want to explore my old interests like classical studies and astronomy at home again 🤩
I chuckled when you talked about Psychology multiple choice questions! I am almost finished with my PhD in Psychology (with a specialization in Teaching and a research focus on Adolescent Bereavement). For part of my undergrad, I was an English Lit major and I miss it! Maybe when I recover from this PhD, I’ll go back for a Master’s in Literature ☺️
I was a French major in undergrad, and once you really get into the higher levels, you really learn so much about history and culture and literature from the 11th Century to the modern day. Not only that, but language classes teach you how to problem-solve and figure out how to express yourself and what you need when you can't speak English, and it teaches you about what that culture values based on the words that exist in their language. I'm for universities keeping their language requirement, especially because so many are beginning to drop those requirements and downsize their language departments. It teaches you how to think differently.
Great video! I always love to hear what people are studying. For my bachelor I studied European languages and cultures, including three years of Italian. I always loved those classes, they were the best! For my master's degree I am now studying Euroculture, a study focusing on Europe, its culture, its politics, its societies and I am absolutely loving it! I absolutely love your videos!
Finishing off a sociology degree right now and somewhat aimlessly looking into another major and maybe a minor in something (I’m still a sophomore), so this is a godsend. And from my favorite book-tuber, too! God bless
I am a psych major and I laughed at your feelings towards the multiple choice tests because yes!! they’re so… frustrating and worded awfully for no reason 😭 half the time I will think I understand the concepts of the class until I take a test. It hurts but I guess you just get used to it 🙃
something i'm strangly curious about is learning about how uni works in other countries so listening to your experience was interesting. in spain, in literature degrees we don't g et much subject choice but we do have very general subjects in our first two years which give a good solid and varied background to the rest of the degree (history, general linguistics, latin...) i studied latin for 3 years and ancient greek for 2 in high school (required in humanities pathways in high school here) they were both amazing and fascinating subjectsç i'm doing two degrees at the same time because i'm insane so i do french and english, we have language (history of language is, in fact, also a nightmare in french) and literature as well as in french some random courses that are actually really cool such as a general comparative literature and comparative language classes and french cinema
My favorite class i took in college was History of the Book. I went to art school and it was a course in the book arts department and it was so damn cool because it went through the history of so many elements of books including development of paper, ink, binding techniques and also things like the development of written language. It also went over a lot of WHAT was written down throughout history and books used as a tool versus books for pleasure/ luxury items because of how complex each form of the book was and how accessible it was.... it was such a cool topic and the professor was SO engaging and clearly cared so much both about the subject itself and each and every student. I could talk about that class forever
Ha! I have a similar experience with college level essay. In English I got a bad grade on my first essay. So I was determined to do better. Now also my second paper was more personal and creative writing- I wrote a 6 page essay. After turning it in my friend said - unless specified you really should only write no more than 3 pages or 2 pages whatever. My heart sunk! I felt so stupid. Until I scored a 97 and it was the highest in the class it honored a praise of how this instructor never gives such high scores. I was like well shit!!! 🤣
I'm italian and to be honest you're not bad at all even of you have done only two years!!! And btw "rusty" is "arrugginita" I love you and your videos so so so much ❤
I've literally just this week started stuying again, 3.5 years after finishing my BA! I'm now in a 2 year part time course to become a counsellor, but looking at the official equivalency table e.t.c. on the government website it's a level 5 course, which is the same as getting to the end of second year of a BA here in the UK, so basically I'm doing the same amount of work as the first two years of my bachelors but also with a full time job at the same time, so pray for me please everyone
I'm from germany, I'm also an english major (you've inspired me a lot) and I love it! I'm currently minoring in linguistics but tbh I found it not that interesting so next semester I'm switching to cultural anthropology and European ethnology, hoping that is more fun :') i had thought about majoring in film but I've heard so much stuff about people who study film that it made me not want to study film lol, and this was just another confirmation of that
it's fascinating to me that archaeology is a part of anthropology over there! i'm studying archaeology in the netherlands, and admittedly my uni doesn't offer any anthropology courses, but in every uni archaeology is a separate course. ofc i realise that archaeology technically is anthropology, but i do think it's fascinating to look at the differences between north america and europe in this approach also! your description of classical studies really sounds like my greek & roman archaeology courses (which is also what i'm considering specializing in) which might explain some of the anthropology-archaeology divide
Thank you so much for such sincere descriptions of your classes! In many study vlogs, unfortunately, people do not share their honest opinions on their classes(
I'm majoring in accounting and currently pursuing a Masters degree in it to prepare for the CPA exam! My only gripe is that I had to take a bunch of business classes that I did not enjoy like Marketing and Finance....basically "How to Be a Capitalist 101." I wish I had taken more art and language classes. I minored in French for my undergrad because I already had so many credits from high school. That was a nice break from Accounting/Business all the time. I also took some Italian classes to prepare to study abroad in Florence but that didn't happen because, as with you, of health issues.
History of the English language. My senior year getting my English degree I dropped this class and took the class "stress management" instead which was an amazing class! I love learning and my university experience, loved learning about yours, thanks Emma 😁
I've always found it really interesting that in America and Canada etc, you can do so many different classes so you can then choose a major. In the UK, straight outa college (at 18) you just pick a straight degree topic and choose subjects on offer within that topic. You can opt for a joint honours if the uni you're applying to offers some joints, but then, thats still only two subjects and theyre usually two subjects that are within a similar vein anyways. I initially did Theatre and Film Studies as a joint honours degree but then needed a year off after my second year and ended up transferring to a uni that didnt offer Theatre and Film together. So I ended up transfering into a straight Theatre degree to finish. In the UK, its kinda like, if you realise in the first year you dont like it - you have the option to switch to another degree if you decide early enough in the year - but otherwise people just dropped out of uni altogether. I quite like the idea that you can shop around so to speak if you're unsure. Maybe an option of a straight degree if youre completely sure but offer people a university experience like you had if they werent fully commited yet. It's so hard to know exactly what you want to do at 18; nevermind them getting us to choose our GCSE's in year 8 (12/13 years old). They preface it like 'what do you want to be, choose these now its important for your career' and I've always thought thats a lot of pressure for a 12/13 year old. Our tastes are always changing, it sucks that everything gets so set in stone so early. I have a 1st class Theatre degree now mainly because I got sick when i was doing my GCSE's and then because of what it was, it affected me for years afterwards. I took A levels with the intention of being a vet but ended up dropping them and doing Theatre purely because I found it an easier subject and luckily I loved it anyway. But now I will probably never be a vet (I didnt like chemistry anyways ahah) but if I could choose again now, I would definitely love to do an English and Creative writing degree. I'm the same as you, I just love to learn, but access to learning after you've done a degree already and want to change your mind is really hard. Anyways, this comment got super long haha always happy to hear from you ^_^
@@Lara-mx4cd yeah, to get into a vetinary course when I was in school meant I only had to take 'a science' class haha so I did take physics. I actually enjoyed physics and it overlapped with my maths class too which helped but sadly i had to drop. but yeah, not something I would want to pick back up now I am older - not for the lack of interest in the subject matter it's just a hell of a lot of work. I respect you so much :D
@@isobelledger I hate maths but really enjoy the "biology" side of things, so physics is sadly not something I enjoy, but I'm always impressed by people who do. But I totally agree that getting back into "schooling" and academia is tough when you've been working a while. The degree is a lot of work and I'm currently having a minor mental breakdown over my Anatomy Exam tomorrow, but it can also be a lot of fun :)
@@Lara-mx4cd Gosh, I wish you the best for your exam!! :D Yeah, one day i would love to do another degree. I could theoretically go and do an English MA with what I have but I like to have a foundation so I would want to do a BA before an MA and I dont feel like I want to do a Theatre MA. I did have a place on one before I realised I had been following that path simply because 'thats what came next' so I decided not to go for that at the time. I do stand by that decicion but I miss being in education quite a bit.
thanks for sharing this emma! I felt so inspired and motivated after watching this. I'm taking architecture course bcs I enjoy drawing too but I still have a huge interest in literature. I'll see in the future where this interest bring me :))
I studied chemical engineering because I really loved chemistry and physics in high school 🥴 in retrospect I wish I had chosen a pure science but I did really appreciate how engineering ingrains you with a way of approaching and solving problems. It’s a lot more about processes and systems than memorization which I really struggle with. I also minored in political science and took several survey courses in the humanities that combined like history and English and philosophy. I ended up going to grad school for public affairs and environmental science so now my coursework is split between economics, policy, and environmental chemistry topics. My least fav course was general psychology for 100% the same reason you said I just felt like I could have googled most of it. I also really hated some of my upper level engineering work. The best course I took was a one-time seminar style course on the history of climate change. There were 8 people in there and we basically traced 200 years of science leading to our understanding of global climate change but we did it as historians. It made me wish I had taken more history because it was basically like taking something people really can’t seem to agree on and reconstructing the full truth of it in a systematic way so we can better understand it in present time. That course completely changed the trajectory of my academic career.
It’s so funny watching this video and thinking of my own path to majoring in English lit. I took psychology, philosophy, sociology, and biology during the first two years of my BA when I was just going for a liberal arts degree. I enjoyed all of my courses except biology. I left when I realized I didn’t know what my degree was actually for and came back when I realized I love reading, why not make a career of it? Now I have a BA in English literature and a MA in Education. I really enjoyed testing out other subject areas, and would continue to do so if education was not so pricey. Now, I just satisfy my curiosity by watching random lectures on UA-cam every now and then.
My favorite course for my literature degree was definitely my novel to film one. we studied Trainspotting, the English patient, remains of the day and a bunch of other novel adaptations 10/10 would recommend
im a native italian speaker, and i was listening to you talk whilst doing some research of my own since im starting uni soon, and let me tell you i thought my brain had started translating words automatically, i was so confused. I think you should take it up again, youre so on the right path to becoming totally fluent! (its arrugginita, you were right the first time!!)
I studied Business Administration. It was a great experience to start a semester with no clue about your courses and three months later you’re able to pass an academic exam on this topic. I loved it so much. At one point I added some language classes to my courses and chose Russian and English. Russian started from zero but English was writing essays, translating economical texts from English to German and vice versa and reading some classical literature (Dickens, Twain and Shaw). It shaped my love for the English language even more.
I could not choose my subjects in college, except for a few optional courses, one of them being "Evil Perpetrators in America" which was the most interesting one. We would discuss about crimes, trauma theory and trauma response in books, comics, historical events. Great course, amazing professor!
In response to your language course, I love language and learning different languages. I am currently studying three addition languages to my native English, with Swedish being my absolute favourite. It’s such a fascinating subject!
Hi Emma!!! I’m a double major in English and History with the minor in Philosophy!!! I’ve been in school for about 3 years now, with a gap year between the first the second, and I have changed my major/minor like 4 times (but I have always had English there). The way you felt about your biology courses is how I feel about the teaching courses I took my second year. I really thought being a teacher could work for me and I was VERY wrong. Sometimes it’s good to figure those things out to early though :)
@@bugtoes6169 i plan on applying to graduate school for either library and information sciences or english (not sure what exactly), i’m still figuring what i want out
I’m a psych major and it’s interesting to hear that the psych course you took talked about sexual stuff. In my university there’s a biology course that’s practically a sex Ed class that people take for easy units and the psych courses are more development focused and do a lot of analyzing research. Though my favorite non-major course I’ve taken is the class I’m taking right now on intro to gay and lesbian fiction. The discussions we’ve had on the readings are always so interesting and I’m happy I was able to take it before graduating
Your university sounds really similar to ours here in the US in terms of having so many courses to choose from. I was extremely indecisive when I first started college. I started my college career studying Physical Therapy, then I switched to Psychology, then Spanish, then finally settled on my original passion, Zoology which is what I got my 4 yr degree in. Then a few years later, I went to Nursing school and got an additional degree in Nursing, lol. Then 15 years later, during the pandemic, I took 3 online courses just for fun through my local university in Wildlife Conservation, Ornithology and Winter Ecology (back to my original passion, lol). It was so fun to be back in that learning environment and I had a blast! I think I will be a lifetime learner and I love that there is always an opportunity to have that learning experience no matter how old you are :)
I thought your remarks were very insightful. I hope you filled out those course evaluations at the end of each semester. I will make one criticism, though: when you talked about the geology course(?), about the length of days on other planets, you said you can't think of any circumstance where you would ever need or use that. What about poetry? What did Poe say about "night's Plutonian shore"? So beautiful. I understand what you mean about not caring about that stuff in a practical sense, but as readers and writers, that stuff is GOLD, baby. GOLD! 🌚🌕
Hello from British Columbia Canada 🇨🇦👍🖐♥️ I have a BFA. I needed a math or Science, I chose Biology because it is all memorization. Because I could draw I put little diagrams in my answer to "lifecycle of the angiospore and how air moves ..circulation is in bird lungs ...I used my coloured crayons. I got an A . The professor wanted me to join his enviro-tech program. You hit it on the head about the essays being different, he told me how to write for the sciences. Knew that I was used to psychology anthropology philosophy and art history.
"Ho seguito un corso di italiano per due anni all'università, ma è da molto molto tempo che non parlo in italiano, quindi sono un po' arrugginita!" Here you go! Your pronunciation is perrrrrfect Emma!
I went to a high school, which was called a "gifted" school, where each class had a specific subject to focus on (we still studied all other subjects, but had more class time on the subject of our so-called class). We had to take an entrance exam for the subject we want to study (e. g. English, maths, chemistry, etc.) to get into this place. When I was in grade 9 I suddenly became very interested in biology and thought that would be a promising path. But when I had to choose between English and Biology exams (funnily enough the exam date and time for these two were the same), I chose English. And I got into the second English class in my high school, which was not so serious about us joining the 'Olympic' teams (in my country there is Olympic "competition" where "good" students join in, basically we would cram everything we can, take an exam, and if we could get high marks, like the top 3, we would be granted the title, and some 'scholarship'. So the first-class students were all in or forced to study and get their slot in the Olympic team.) I had a choice, so I asked the teacher in the biology class if I could join their class, and she said yes if I really loved biology and wanted to try. And I joined them. And the following year was the most miserable time for me in terms of studying because I spent some time in my class, then some time in the biology one, I didn't really blend in either place and also realized that I sucked at biology. I asked myself so many times why I was so bad at it when clearly everything we were learning interested me. And when the 'competition' came and I failed, I felt like I did enough, because at least I'd tried and gone till the end. And though I didn't know what to do next, I knew I wouldn't have to go on with biology. Then something else happened. The history teacher asked me if I wanted to study with the team, yeah, the Olympic team. I gave it a try, I got a medal in an "area" competition, but then failed at the national one because I was too stressed out I couldn't study with my best mind. It was in 12th grade, and the time this happened was January 2020. You guys know what happened next in all our lives. Still, it was a fun journey with the history team. I was thinking back and forth about which way to go when I applied for university, but that was only based on those three experiences: got into the English class, joined the Biology one, and got a small medal for the History team. My mind was that limited 😂 And... all the good universities are in another city, my parents wouldn't let me go due to my health condition, the pandemic, etc., so I stayed in my old hometown and chose the (supposedly) best university in this province. I'm studying business, which is basically the most common choice for anyone (in my country) who doesn't know what to choose (besides English, interestingly) 😂. And I'm not really happy with my study but I've met some of the best professors (in my opinion) who nurtured my will to study and learn. I got a really cool and kind prof who influenced me so much that I learned all the maths stuff by myself and passed his class. Also, I have plenty of time to read books (that I haven't the time to read when I was in high school) and try to learn everything else that I find interesting or necessary to me. University was like the 'ultimate goal' that we high schoolers could think of. I'm not sad that it didn't live up to my expectation but I also think I'm not wasting the time I'm having, and it's always good to be able to learn.
I got my degree in accounting, but I was an undeclared major my freshman year. Three of my favorite general studies classes that I took were Greek mythology, psychology, and legal environment.
So interesting! In my country it's so different, we don't have that minor and major stuff, and I feel like we have SO MANY subjects. I study psychology, currently on 4th period, still 6 periods left and I have like 6 to 7 subjects per semester. (I'm from Brazil btw) I love the way academia works here tbh, psychology is such an unique course, I've never had to do a single multiple choice test, our grade comes from essays, projects, seminars, documentaries, they literally try out every type of alternative evaluation method you can think of, gotta give my professors credits for the creativity. Also the they arethe personification of the "humanities teacher stereotype", I've had great experiences with them, so passionate about their line of work and offer a lot of opportunities to work with them in research and extensions programs. I would be interested in experiencing academia in a country like Canada though, loved the video!
Hi Emma!! I'm a journalism and English literature undergrad in my senior year, but I've also taken a bunch of random courses out of interest with my elective slots. Here were my faves: 1. Madwomen in the Attic: Gender and Insanity in 19th Century British Literature (English) 2. American Girlhood: formation of girlhood in American literature (English) 3. 19th Century British Children's Fantasy (English) 4. Tracking the Romantic Comedy (comparative literature, so it was a film and literature analysis course) 5. Research seminar on Global adaptations of Shakespeare (English) 6. Introduction to Neuroscience (Neuro) 7. Asian American identity in pop culture (Asian American studies) 8. Introduction to Existentialism (philosophy) 9. US Gay and Lesbian History (History / Gender Studies) 10. Race and Society (Sociology) 11. Intro to Film Photography (Art Theory & Practice) 12. my French courses
hi! I'm italian and (apart from confirming it's arrugginita😅and being shocked at the speed of test correction of your italian teachers because apparently they only do that in foreign countries and can't manage to figure out how to do it in their own motherland🤦♀) I'm studying psychobiology / cognitive psychology at university! So far I've taken some biology/neuroscience related classes (applied biology, psychobiology and cognitive neuroscience), a cultural anthropology one, a statistics one and a bunch of different types of psychology (general, development, social, dynamic, work and personality). I'm halfway through my journey and I'm really enjoying it so far. Also, if I didn't get into psychology my second choice would have been english literature!
Thank you for sharing this, I've been curious as to what courses you'd taken, and your response to them.What a wonderful smorgasbord for a writer to have on board. It hurts me that you had 2 years stolen by the concussion, and I admit to being curious as to how it came about, but I'm so, so glad you recovered so well, and thrive in the Book Tube world at least, if not yet in all aspects of life. That's a struggle we all have, always, of course. Be well, stay safe, and namaste. Emma, you're the best.
As a philosophy student I totally get what you are talking about, but I can assure everyone that is interested in the subject, that it is possibly to study that field without engaging in pointless discussions. At least in Germany it's more common to have small classes that talk in depth about certain texts or ideas and that comes with a lot off bonus content about history, languages and politics.
My chemistry professor was so amazing that I took organic chemistry as well, I’m a business major. It’s truly amazing how a professor can make or break a class no matter how much you study. Some with Economics. I did great in macro economics and hardly passed micro economics because I had a different professor. This pattern goes on and on.. When you find a good professor no subject is too difficult.
Because higher education is free in Denmark (you’re actually paid to study), the system is a little bit different. You’re not meant to figure out what you want to study at uni by taking courses from different areas. Instead, from day one you only take classes in your chosen subject or major (mine was English language and lit, yay!), and then if you don’t vibe with it, you just drop out, basically, and start again next semester. For all subjects there are mandatory courses and a ton of electives. That way, you end up having covered so much ground within your field of research by the time you’re finished with your degree which is great, although I definitely also see the value of dipping your toes into different areas of study as well, even if some of them do end up not being particularly relevant to your major. Some electives in DK are offered across subjects, so for instance I had electives that were really a part of the history, international business communication and American studies subjects. My favourite course at uni was probably just Advanced Brit Lit because LOVE.
I'm in my last semester of my Bachelor of Music with a concentration in Piano Performance and a minor in voice, and last night I submitted my application to do a master's in music history. My favourite class was a seminar I took last year on the sources of music scores that explored how music began to be written down in the Middle Ages, how written music moves from place to place, and how music publishing companies use sources. My favourite both because I learned a ton and it was super interesting, and because the prof flat out offered to supervise my MA thesis
As an English graduate, I also took an introductory biology course in college and thought I would love it just like I did in high school. (I did not). But I did take a course about plants and very much enjoyed it! We got to hear the stories behind each plant and learn the meaning of their name. (Latin is such a beautiful language.)
such an interesting video!! i'm only in my second semester of my sociology degree, but so far i've taken a philosophy course that is required for all new students at the university, where we also learn about argumentation, introduction to sociology, classical and contemporary sociological theory and social scientific method. here in norway, the semesters and classes are, to a degree, already chosen for you, though you can make some changes (not in the first year!). i'm not loving learning about the classical sociologists tbh, so i'm very torn between continuing with sociology or switching to either literature (nordic or english) or liguistics as i am endlessly fascinated by language
Another great video Emma, thank you! I'm currently exploring my educational horizons with liberal arts and it's comforting to hear you did something similar. Intro to humanities has been my favorite course so far. I'm grappling with eventually majoring in English like you bc at the end of the day, reading, writing, and analyzing such things have never ceased as a passion for me. Sending good vibes :)
As a Dutch student im so fascinated by how the Northern American school/uni systems work. In The Netherlands you pick a study and all the courses are already chosen for you. Sometimes you have some free room to chose a subject, but most of the time you can pick out of two (maybe four) options. It baffles me you can get a valid degree with all these different subjects. Currently i'm doing a premaster in literature and i didn't get to chose anything XD
Specifically in Canada, universities fall under this. Colleges (which are a more hands on approach) are more similar to the Netherlands. I’m studying library technician studies, and I only pick one class a semester out of my core classes
I studied in France and yeah, it's the same :/ I wish we had more liberties over the courses we take.
portugal is the same way! on the one hand i can appreciate having that structure in my life because i'm pretty indecisive, but it does bum me out that i can't take classes that are outside my field of study :(
Same in Brazil. When I was studying psychology, all the classes were related directly to the major and there was maybe a tiny little wiggle room. I left for medical school (direct entry here) and it’s the same, you can sometimes chose your rotations, it’s very rare, but that’s it. Don’t even get me started in the USA major and minor degree. Can’t wrap my head around that.
In Mexico we have to pick in the last year of the High School equivalent, if you wanna go into the TEM part of STEM (or either Chemistry or Physics) you continue with the relevant classes, if you don't you're done with math and take the Humanities route which can also end in Med School. None of those paths can be skipped, you're never actually given the option to mix and match between them (I did mix but had to ask the principal and talk to all the relevant teachers before they let me) and I think choosing a specific branch is a requirement for even applying to the most common careers
As an anthropologist who spends A LOT of time in research, this video made me chuckle. I think every anthro major has at least one professor like the one you mentioned. That said, the field of anthropology is so much more than primates and archaeology, and if you ever get the opportunity to take another anthro course I'd encourage you to check out linguistics or cultural anthropology (which is what I pursued for my graduate and doctorate degrees; english was my undergrad major).
second this!! i took an intro cultural anthropology course to fulfill a requirement and it became my favorite class that semester. 10/10 recommend.
I second this as well - I studied archaeology, but minored in physical anthropology. Primates are such a small part of anthropology as a whole - there’s cultural anthropology, linguistic anthropology (which might be more up your alley) etc. the list goes on and on!
It is mandatory in my university to take an introduction to Anthropology course ( Bio, Psyc and Cultural Anthropology ) and also 6 other subjects (also mandatory) in one semester. Cultural anthropology was super interesting and also the only subject which i really liked. 10/10 defiantly.
as a greek person, when you spoke about your classical studies classes i got so freaking excited ahh- it's amazing seeing people from aboroad appreciating our culture 💙love you & your channel so so much
As an Italian university student it's so interesting and fascinating to have a look at how the Canadian university system is organised and how it works because it's SO different from the Italian one! I love that as a student you can pick different subjects that are not necessarily in line with your major, and even the idea of having a major and a minor is so cool and out of the world for me ahahah. In Italy when you choose your university path you'll take courses that belong to that area and mostly they're already chosen for you, so you don't really have the opportunity to explore other subjects and delve into different areas of knowledge, which it's a shame in my opinion. At the same time I think that the system is structured in such way to guarantee a certain coherency to your uni career i guess? Very interesting to see the comparison. Also, it was so nice to see your enthusiasm about classical studies because I studied Latin and Ancient Greek language+literature+history in high school (for 5 years) but I left it behind when I enrolled in Law School at uni and I miss it a bit :') Last comment I swear but I wanted to say that your Italian accent and vocabulary was good for someone who has stopped studying the language years ago (I assume)!! You almost got it with rusty= arrugginita eheh good video as always emma
Man, I miss university! Sitting around discussing big ideas. Best time of my life. I definitely remember the growing pains of switching from high school writing to college writing. I was a history major and political science minor. One of my favorite courses was History of Islam (I took it in London!) and also Russian History. I took Latin as well and loved it! Congrats on impending (?) graduation! These videos are amazing!
Man that makes me happy to hear. I am in a STEM field and so are all of my friends and university is anything but fun for us. Some moments are interesting, such as group studies, but majority of it is just doing the same things on repeat. ISTG there is no such thing as a fun STEM field. The social studies and linguists are always having a blast in my uni, while the rest of us are suffering XD
question: what career are you doing now? i want to study the liberal arts but have no idea if i can even get a decent job with it
@@lindsaysyt I'm a Social Studies teacher but it took a whole other degree as well.
As somebody who also loves to study but already has uni days past them, I love discovering new areas of study on coursera and edx! I got a degree in biology and now I'm taking courses in linguistics, geopolitics, engineering, philosophy and more
Now going into english major at Seoul National Univ, you were a huge influence when I was struggling to find sources for eng lit. Thank you always
This was so insightful!
I'm an English lit student also ( Stockholm), and currently doing a Gothic lit course.. yes it's as amazing as it sounds. Today we discussed the vampire as a symbol of disruption to the chronology of history/time. And touched on male vs female vampires.
Last term i did a love and it's discontents course which was also great.
I'm so intrigued by classical studies and philosophy, though I'm afraid it's going to dissapoint me somehow. Haha. Great to hear your thoughts on it!!
that course sounds like my dream 😭
Yes labs were dreadful for me too! There are a ton of great professors and some that should NEVER teach! 😆 The meme chat! My fave classes were ones on ancient Greek and Roman culture! Best advice I can give for fledgling college and university students is to try not to miss any assignments. Helps with your GPA. Great video idea Emma, YOU are practically a lit. Professor here on UA-cam! 🥰🎓
Oh my god so true!! There are so many professors I loved that just could not teach. Could not relate more to this 😅
Hi Emma! Italian girl here! You said it right the first time: rusty= arrugginita. 👏The method your professors used was the best one. I've been studying foreign languages all my life (in high school and university, I graduated in translation) and even if it can be scary and embarrassing you have to talk and talk and chat and chat to learn a foreign language. It should be a very active process. It is soooooo nice and heartwarming to hear you speak my mother tongue. Well done❤
such a nice comment for Emma! I am impressed with all that can learn other languages! 👏Brava!
I’m getting my degree in Fine Arts (illustration specifically) but I discovered a love for Art History while I’ve been in school, so I decided to get a minor in it. But now I only have one Art History class left for the degree and there are SO MANY topics I still want to take. I feel like I just left the survey courses and now I’m almost done :(
I absolutely loved this review! I was so scared of coming into college not knowing exactly what I wanted to do but was afraid of sticking to something I didn’t love. I ended up following my heart and committing to biology (I’m really passionate about it but I understand how people wouldn’t be. It definitely is overwhelming) I love that you had the courage to try so many different career choices. Wish I saw this before college 😅❤
I study Accounting with a Japanese minor. I've taken courses in Russian and German, and in HS, I took Latin, French, and Spanish. So, I totally understand your excitement about language courses!! I absolutely loved my Spanish linguistics class, and I plan on taking Spanish dialectology. The variety of dialects and learning them is one of my favorite things about Spanish. I also studied abroad in Germany last summer, and took courses on German culture, music, and the language. I'd love to hear more about your language learning journey!!
My freshman year I took a course called "Confucianism and Samurai Ethic" which was a super cool course about the history of confucianism in Japan, and how it created Samurai ethics (such as harakiri) and the culture and morality of Japan as a whole.
I took another course called "Memory and the American Civil War" which was a dive into how the American north and south have taught the civil war differently and still teach it differently to this day in schools. The north is taught that the cause of the civil war was slavery, and the south is taught the cause was state's rights. Very fascinating.
I took educational psychology, which was super interesting, a lot of psychologist theories on childhood development.
The interesting thing is that both of those reasons are technically about slavery. States' rights = the right to own slaves whether or not the South patently admits it.
The psychology professors teach us, psych students, how to make difficult tests. I literally spend half of my degree studying that. So it only makes sense that we are then subjected to taking hard tests. Speaking of which, I am taking the last exam of my Psych Masters degree tomorrow and I should be studying right now. lol
Okay - make sure to get a good night's sleep and eat a sensible breakfast [good luck!].
Your italian is still quite good👏"rusty" is "arrugginita" btw😉 It always makes me smile how you say "ciao" at the end of your videos🥰 Your channel is one of my absolute favourites, you personality is so calming and charming😘 hugs from Italy!
thank you THANK YOU!! I feel so comforted as a second-year Biology major who's finally decided to switch her major to Literature next semester. Everything you said about science classes was so relatable - so many professors are so smart, but do they know how to teach? absolutely not. Also there's no creativity whatsoever when writing academic texts, there's only one singular truth and if I don't know it I have already failed. Partly because of those reasons, my longing for creativity and my huge love for books, I'm finally ditching biology (ALONG WITH ALL THE MANDATORY CHEMISTRY, STATISTICS ETC. THAT I DIDN'T EXPECT TO COME WITH IT smh). Despite getting excellent grades my soul is not fulfilled at all by majoring in science... I love you, you're my comfort person and my favourite youtuber
I majored in Microbiology and minored in Chemistry for my undergrad, and had a similar experience with my intro bio course. My professor had zero patience for us naive 18 year olds and openly told us that it was a “weed out” course, and that we should expect half of us to drop out by the end of the semester. I stuck with it and got the worst grade of my entire undergraduate experience (probably because the final was 40% of our grade and was 150 questions multiple choice with a surprise essay at the end), but I will say that I’m glad I kept my major. The upper level biology courses were absolutely fantastic and I’m now in a Masters program for Public Health. My goal is to be an infectious disease epidemiologist! But I absolutely agree with your point that some of the smartest people just CANNOT teach worth a darn 😂
I found schools didn’t suit me but learning is my passion, so - after eventually convincing my parents! - I’m studying A-levels (British high-school level equivalent) but on my own! I do have zoom meetings once a week with a teacher from each of my subjects to check how I’m getting on, but it’s mostly just me. I absolutely love it, it gives me the flexibility and time to explore my interests without feeling like I’m being talked down to or simply an object in a system like it was at school. The only downside is I’ve only got an hour a week to talk to someone as interested in each subject as I am, I think clubs are something I miss from school. I’m doing four subjects, Sociology, Philosophy, History and English Literature, all of which have been even better than I could have hoped.
So, in order! First, I’m doing the sociology of education at the moment, the second non-optional module is crime then the optional modules I’ve gone for are the sociology of health and probably my second optional module will be global development - it’s been excellent, I’ve really enjoyed it and my tutor is so so kind, but I’ve found A-Level probably still isn’t quite deep enough for me, there’s still a lot of insight but a lot of it feels a little *too* intuitive and obvious? Philosophy I occasionally have the same problem with that you do, particularly with philosopher Immanuel Kant, who feels like he comes up with convenient ways of justifying his intuition and pretending that his justification is “perfect rationality” but even then, i have a good time getting to scorn him in essays and try to trip him up with his own logic. History I think I made the best module decision of my life, I’m studying the Wars of the Three Kingdoms (including the English Civil War) - I am 100% sure most people would find that subject matter dull, but I find that everyone is just modern enough that I can understand some of their viewpoints and not others, it’s a wild ride! Getting to study this on my own has been such a benefit, I’ve had the time to do everything from reading the letters of Charles the first to visiting Hampton Court Palace and spending hours talking to the staff. Talking of which, there was a nice tie in with English Literature, the talk that day was “plays and politics: the english court & drama in the 1600s”. I got to talk to this very nice lady for hours about both the history of how plays were staged at hampton court, as well as the meaning of tragedy (which is the course I’m doing at A-level english lit, along with social & political protest writing). We spoke about Aristotle & hamaertia vs Jan Kott’s idea of a “grotesque” play regarding King Lear, whether tragedy should be didactic or open to interpretation, institutional critique vs character flaws, why her favourite play is Aphra Benn’s the Rover etc. It was such a good day!
I started as a biology major thinking I was going to be a physical therapist … that quickly changed when I got to college level chemistry and could not pass the class! I dropped it and switched to Social Studies education and now I’m a teacher! Totally opposite direction and I’m so happy with my decision! This is a message for everyone, change your major if you don’t like it! College is too expensive to be miserable!!!!
I don't agree with this but it is a valid point. Me and all my friends are in STEM, and while we are struggling with the studies, the thing is, we did not enter these fields with the hope of it being easy-peasy. We went here because we believe that if we put all the effort during early adulthood, we would have a better future. If you are content with a smaller pay and enjoy easier fields, go ahead and change it, but staying for the sake of a better paying job is also so much worth it. I would say most STEM fields are worth it except for Medicine because that field is trash. The rest of them start hard but after some time they become fun, since u know how they work!
Thank you so much for this. I'm getting close to having to choose what to study and it has been a very unresolved process of choosing between what I love and what can amount to a consisteny and well paid job. The whole thing is just very interesting and helpful to me. Don't change, because this sort of stuff you do is always flourishing with honesty and lack of concealment which is nowadays rare, especially on the internet.
This was so relatable, loved hearing about your experiences, Emma! University can be tough for sure. I changed my career twice because I truly didn't know what I wanted to do. Now I'm studying Literature and Creative Writing, and I love it ❤️ Congrats on graduating!
I ran away from Environmental Sciences and now I'm studying Languages (English and German) ... I guess we are all living the same life . What I really hated of my classes in Environmental Sciences was that as you said it was all memorization. It's a pity that they don't offer to students classes about Environmental movements history or Philosophy of Nature etc... I would really appreciated at that time.
i’m a junior in high school and i’ve been thinking a lot about college lately, so i’m so excited for this video!! your academia(??) videos alone could just about convince me to be an english major emma, so i’m so glad to get your opinion on other subjects too! ❤
check out crash course StudyHall.
arizona state university has an amazing offer for general eds
The most fascinating class I took in college was probably physiological psychology. As a class that combined psychology and neuroscience, it was probably the most difficult class I took in college. It had a ton of reading. I mean there would be giant packets that would thump when you dropped them on the table. I loved it, though.
Super insightful video! I also go to Western and had a less than ideal time in biology (in that exact class) and I might be able to potentially guess which prof you had based on your description lol. I love the notion you share that it's okay to not know exactly what you want to do in university - I've had to learn that the hard way through pushing myself to do a minor in pharm when I hate uni level chemistry!
Also, as a psych major, you are absolutely correct about the multiple choice exams and I don't know how I haven't lost my mind already :)
As a quebecer, I love hearing about your university classes because we have a level between high school and university where we would cover all these `extra` subjects that aren’t annexed to our main undergraduate degree. While most undergraduate degrees do have some classes outside the field, they aren’t that many. It a three years where you are more focused on your area of studies. Through the years, I have gathered up certificates (same amount of credits as a minor I reckon) in Art history and in Accounting (I love both as odd as it might sound). I have taken classes in museum studies which were amazing, as well as some in ethnology which were far more boring than I had hoped. I think my worst classes were political science- which was surprising since I have loved them so much in Cégep. But I had never been classes where I thought to myself ` Wow, do I not care about any of this.` I am currently doing a bachelors degree in economics. I do not think I will ever be done with school. I enjoy it so so much. And lucky for me, I have a very large scope of subjects which fascinate me and I could very well never be done with it :P
University is such a wonderful place if you want to learn what you are truly interested in. This is especially important when you face harder parts of the education and i do really recommend to try out higher education! pro tip: read some of the course litterature in advance to get a hum if you want to study a certain subject, for me personally, i read alot of the sociology/social work litterature in advance and fell in love with it and once i started my education officially i have never felt more sure and happy that i get the chance to pursue my dream education =) never stop learning folks!
i got my bs in psych and can confirm that all of the multiple choice questions are like that 🙃 you get used to it, but it never stops hurting ☠️
it‘s also so wild how much a professor can affect the quality of a class. i took a psych human sexuality class and it was so rewarding, specifically because of the prof. i love hearing about other people‘s academic experiences so thank you for sharing! ❤️
I started watching your channel a long while ago, I don’t even remember how many years back it was. I was in high school back then, and now I’m in my first year of uni as an English major :3 Thank you for making such helpful and inspiring videos, they’re half of the reason why I’m an English major atm.
Proud of you for getting through college! It is no easy feat, glad you had a good experience! Thank you for sharing! 😊
i had a similar experience in terms of firstly pursuing one degree and then changing it to what i feel like my soul loves the most: i started studying astrophysics but after some time i realised that even though i loved astronomy a lot, unfortunately i couldn't become a scientist as good as i wanted to be so - i re-entered uni and started studying biology💜 in particular i specialise in cytology/histology and I'm too very very happy i made this decision ☺️
Before the pandemic I was a classics major and I absolutely loved it, especially all of the history classes I was taking (and I have the same Greek textbook as you!) but I wasn’t able to even complete a year bc of obvious reasons but also I was facing so much burnout and just a lot of mental health problems. I really hope that one day I can go back to school and finally get my degree but I’ll need to go through some serious progress to get there
Your feelings about the philosophy course are exactly what makes me question my choice to be a philosophy major lol. Like, there are a lot of concepts we talk about that are really interesting and feel relevant, but there are also a lot of topics that have me thinking "Why does this matter?" Sometimes my professors will just introduce a really confusing and obscure topic that literally no average person will ever think about and that you will likely forget about once the term is over.
Lol I had the same experience with biology. I had to take it to fulfill my core requirements but I took visual art and art history classes for my major, and those class sizes were like 50 at most. My bio class was like 200 it was crazy. But my school offered a lot of cool visual art studios!! I've taken improvisational quiltmaking, natural dyeing for textiles, intaglio printmaking, lithography printmaking, and traditional Japanese woodblocking printmaking (mokuhanga). I was an art history major/visual arts minor, honestly I enjoyed the art courses more, but a lot of the art history classes I took were fun too. Special study in Rembrandt's life/work, ancient to modern Korean art, the art of Buddhism, and my personal favorite, American art from 1900-present! It was really interesting to see how the two halves of my course load interacted with one another--while I was in the Rembrandt class, I was also taking intaglio, and I got to learn about Rembrandt's etchings while also making my own.
Omg I was so excited to hear you went to Western! I’m going to Western for the same degree as you and I’ve watched a ton of your uni videos and I’ve always wondered what school you went to because you made the program sound so great. Now I’m even more excited for uni.
I teach English, Composition, and History in a Classical online academy. It’s nice to know you appreciated your classical studies course. ❤️
I studied biology and loved most parts of it (except the first few semesters, where you had to survive chemistry, maths etc). For my masters degree, I changed university and it was awful! I was the only woman there and had a tough time. Luckily I could write my final thesis in bioethics (where I was the only student taking the course! :D) and absolutely loved it. I'm working in a completely unrelated field now, but I'm glad that I did finish the course, because I think you learn so much on the way. And sometimes I think I want to go back to uni, because I love learning as well. But ofc you can do that outside of uni as well, it just takes a bit more self-discipline and at the end you can't show a degree...
I know that feeling of not knowing what you want to do with your life so well. I dropped out of media science after one semester and somehow (?) became an occupational therapist. I'm currently taking courses to specialise in hand therapy and I would never have thought I would find it so fascinating - like how everthing in the human body is connected and just makes sense! I also love that I can practise everything I learn on my patients immediately (they're alway very eager to hear all the fun facts and be my test subjects it's very cute)
So yeah I haven't been this much in love with studying ever and I get to help a lot of people!
As someone who got a degree they hate (due to family pressure) and now, due to having spent so long studying an uninteresting subject (to me, of course), don't even know anymore what I exactly enjoy (I just remember that I loved biology and history in high school), do you have any advice in how to find something you truly like?
Okay but a book recommendation list themed around this video. Bio? A book that gave you an out of body surreal experience and / or you found deeply challenging, for example.
hi emma, i love your videos about academia
As a psychology major, thank you for the validation of how hard the tests are!! Ugh they are so difficult.
When I hear about the educational system outside of Romania I just want to cry... 😢 We live in different worlds!
P.S.: I studied Economics in agriculture which sounded very interesting but I hated it!
@@Alex-wl9xw Yes!! And more! 😅
Really enjoyed this video. I'm a 4th year student at the University of Connecticut studying neuroscience and psychology, but my heart rests in literature.
hii emma ♡ i always learn a lot from you ! thank you for your hardwork >
My major is Art History and I love learning about different cultures and time periods. I need to take Classics courses!
What are you planning to do after school?
I loved classical studies in high school! I nearly went on to study that and anthropology, but ended up taking a few gaps years and now I’m studying Veterinary Nursing 😄 this has made me want to explore my old interests like classical studies and astronomy at home again 🤩
I chuckled when you talked about Psychology multiple choice questions! I am almost finished with my PhD in Psychology (with a specialization in Teaching and a research focus on Adolescent Bereavement). For part of my undergrad, I was an English Lit major and I miss it! Maybe when I recover from this PhD, I’ll go back for a Master’s in Literature ☺️
I was a French major in undergrad, and once you really get into the higher levels, you really learn so much about history and culture and literature from the 11th Century to the modern day. Not only that, but language classes teach you how to problem-solve and figure out how to express yourself and what you need when you can't speak English, and it teaches you about what that culture values based on the words that exist in their language. I'm for universities keeping their language requirement, especially because so many are beginning to drop those requirements and downsize their language departments. It teaches you how to think differently.
Great video! I always love to hear what people are studying. For my bachelor I studied European languages and cultures, including three years of Italian. I always loved those classes, they were the best! For my master's degree I am now studying Euroculture, a study focusing on Europe, its culture, its politics, its societies and I am absolutely loving it!
I absolutely love your videos!
You inspired me to keep pushing I will keep on keeping on… And I hope to be as smart as you when it come to reading books
Finishing off a sociology degree right now and somewhat aimlessly looking into another major and maybe a minor in something (I’m still a sophomore), so this is a godsend. And from my favorite book-tuber, too! God bless
Not sure yet. That’s grad school material.
I am a psych major and I laughed at your feelings towards the multiple choice tests because yes!! they’re so… frustrating and worded awfully for no reason 😭 half the time I will think I understand the concepts of the class until I take a test. It hurts but I guess you just get used to it 🙃
something i'm strangly curious about is learning about how uni works in other countries so listening to your experience was interesting. in spain, in literature degrees we don't g et much subject choice but we do have very general subjects in our first two years which give a good solid and varied background to the rest of the degree (history, general linguistics, latin...)
i studied latin for 3 years and ancient greek for 2 in high school (required in humanities pathways in high school here) they were both amazing and fascinating subjectsç
i'm doing two degrees at the same time because i'm insane so i do french and english, we have language (history of language is, in fact, also a nightmare in french) and literature as well as in french some random courses that are actually really cool such as a general comparative literature and comparative language classes and french cinema
My favorite class i took in college was History of the Book. I went to art school and it was a course in the book arts department and it was so damn cool because it went through the history of so many elements of books including development of paper, ink, binding techniques and also things like the development of written language. It also went over a lot of WHAT was written down throughout history and books used as a tool versus books for pleasure/ luxury items because of how complex each form of the book was and how accessible it was.... it was such a cool topic and the professor was SO engaging and clearly cared so much both about the subject itself and each and every student. I could talk about that class forever
Ha! I have a similar experience with college level essay. In English I got a bad grade on my first essay. So I was determined to do better. Now also my second paper was more personal and creative writing- I wrote a 6 page essay. After turning it in my friend said - unless specified you really should only write no more than 3 pages or 2 pages whatever. My heart sunk! I felt so stupid. Until I scored a 97 and it was the highest in the class it honored a praise of how this instructor never gives such high scores. I was like well shit!!! 🤣
I'm italian and to be honest you're not bad at all even of you have done only two years!!!
And btw "rusty" is "arrugginita"
I love you and your videos so so so much ❤
I've literally just this week started stuying again, 3.5 years after finishing my BA! I'm now in a 2 year part time course to become a counsellor, but looking at the official equivalency table e.t.c. on the government website it's a level 5 course, which is the same as getting to the end of second year of a BA here in the UK, so basically I'm doing the same amount of work as the first two years of my bachelors but also with a full time job at the same time, so pray for me please everyone
I'm from germany, I'm also an english major (you've inspired me a lot) and I love it! I'm currently minoring in linguistics but tbh I found it not that interesting so next semester I'm switching to cultural anthropology and European ethnology, hoping that is more fun :')
i had thought about majoring in film but I've heard so much stuff about people who study film that it made me not want to study film lol, and this was just another confirmation of that
it's fascinating to me that archaeology is a part of anthropology over there! i'm studying archaeology in the netherlands, and admittedly my uni doesn't offer any anthropology courses, but in every uni archaeology is a separate course. ofc i realise that archaeology technically is anthropology, but i do think it's fascinating to look at the differences between north america and europe in this approach
also! your description of classical studies really sounds like my greek & roman archaeology courses (which is also what i'm considering specializing in) which might explain some of the anthropology-archaeology divide
Thank you so much for such sincere descriptions of your classes! In many study vlogs, unfortunately, people do not share their honest opinions on their classes(
I'm majoring in accounting and currently pursuing a Masters degree in it to prepare for the CPA exam! My only gripe is that I had to take a bunch of business classes that I did not enjoy like Marketing and Finance....basically "How to Be a Capitalist 101." I wish I had taken more art and language classes. I minored in French for my undergrad because I already had so many credits from high school. That was a nice break from Accounting/Business all the time. I also took some Italian classes to prepare to study abroad in Florence but that didn't happen because, as with you, of health issues.
History of the English language.
My senior year getting my English degree I dropped this class and took the class "stress management" instead which was an amazing class! I love learning and my university experience, loved learning about yours, thanks Emma 😁
whats the deal with this history of english class it sounds so cool
I've always found it really interesting that in America and Canada etc, you can do so many different classes so you can then choose a major. In the UK, straight outa college (at 18) you just pick a straight degree topic and choose subjects on offer within that topic. You can opt for a joint honours if the uni you're applying to offers some joints, but then, thats still only two subjects and theyre usually two subjects that are within a similar vein anyways.
I initially did Theatre and Film Studies as a joint honours degree but then needed a year off after my second year and ended up transferring to a uni that didnt offer Theatre and Film together. So I ended up transfering into a straight Theatre degree to finish.
In the UK, its kinda like, if you realise in the first year you dont like it - you have the option to switch to another degree if you decide early enough in the year - but otherwise people just dropped out of uni altogether.
I quite like the idea that you can shop around so to speak if you're unsure. Maybe an option of a straight degree if youre completely sure but offer people a university experience like you had if they werent fully commited yet. It's so hard to know exactly what you want to do at 18; nevermind them getting us to choose our GCSE's in year 8 (12/13 years old). They preface it like 'what do you want to be, choose these now its important for your career' and I've always thought thats a lot of pressure for a 12/13 year old. Our tastes are always changing, it sucks that everything gets so set in stone so early.
I have a 1st class Theatre degree now mainly because I got sick when i was doing my GCSE's and then because of what it was, it affected me for years afterwards. I took A levels with the intention of being a vet but ended up dropping them and doing Theatre purely because I found it an easier subject and luckily I loved it anyway. But now I will probably never be a vet (I didnt like chemistry anyways ahah) but if I could choose again now, I would definitely love to do an English and Creative writing degree. I'm the same as you, I just love to learn, but access to learning after you've done a degree already and want to change your mind is really hard.
Anyways, this comment got super long haha always happy to hear from you ^_^
I'm in the first semester of a veterinary program and Chemistry is hell and there is even a physics class.
@@Lara-mx4cd yeah, to get into a vetinary course when I was in school meant I only had to take 'a science' class haha so I did take physics. I actually enjoyed physics and it overlapped with my maths class too which helped but sadly i had to drop. but yeah, not something I would want to pick back up now I am older - not for the lack of interest in the subject matter it's just a hell of a lot of work. I respect you so much :D
@@isobelledger I hate maths but really enjoy the "biology" side of things, so physics is sadly not something I enjoy, but I'm always impressed by people who do. But I totally agree that getting back into "schooling" and academia is tough when you've been working a while.
The degree is a lot of work and I'm currently having a minor mental breakdown over my Anatomy Exam tomorrow, but it can also be a lot of fun :)
@@Lara-mx4cd Gosh, I wish you the best for your exam!! :D
Yeah, one day i would love to do another degree. I could theoretically go and do an English MA with what I have but I like to have a foundation so I would want to do a BA before an MA and I dont feel like I want to do a Theatre MA. I did have a place on one before I realised I had been following that path simply because 'thats what came next' so I decided not to go for that at the time. I do stand by that decicion but I miss being in education quite a bit.
@@isobelledger Thank you
thanks for sharing this emma! I felt so inspired and motivated after watching this. I'm taking architecture course bcs I enjoy drawing too but I still have a huge interest in literature. I'll see in the future where this interest bring me :))
I studied chemical engineering because I really loved chemistry and physics in high school 🥴 in retrospect I wish I had chosen a pure science but I did really appreciate how engineering ingrains you with a way of approaching and solving problems. It’s a lot more about processes and systems than memorization which I really struggle with. I also minored in political science and took several survey courses in the humanities that combined like history and English and philosophy. I ended up going to grad school for public affairs and environmental science so now my coursework is split between economics, policy, and environmental chemistry topics.
My least fav course was general psychology for 100% the same reason you said I just felt like I could have googled most of it. I also really hated some of my upper level engineering work. The best course I took was a one-time seminar style course on the history of climate change. There were 8 people in there and we basically traced 200 years of science leading to our understanding of global climate change but we did it as historians. It made me wish I had taken more history because it was basically like taking something people really can’t seem to agree on and reconstructing the full truth of it in a systematic way so we can better understand it in present time. That course completely changed the trajectory of my academic career.
It’s so funny watching this video and thinking of my own path to majoring in English lit. I took psychology, philosophy, sociology, and biology during the first two years of my BA when I was just going for a liberal arts degree. I enjoyed all of my courses except biology. I left when I realized I didn’t know what my degree was actually for and came back when I realized I love reading, why not make a career of it? Now I have a BA in English literature and a MA in Education. I really enjoyed testing out other subject areas, and would continue to do so if education was not so pricey. Now, I just satisfy my curiosity by watching random lectures on UA-cam every now and then.
I’ve been so curious about your university classes! So excited to see it 😊
i can't wait for the video on english language and literature! i'm planning on studying that (maybe even at western!) next year
My favorite course for my literature degree was definitely my novel to film one. we studied Trainspotting, the English patient, remains of the day and a bunch of other novel adaptations 10/10 would recommend
im a native italian speaker, and i was listening to you talk whilst doing some research of my own since im starting uni soon, and let me tell you i thought my brain had started translating words automatically, i was so confused. I think you should take it up again, youre so on the right path to becoming totally fluent! (its arrugginita, you were right the first time!!)
Italian is such a great language to learn for English speakers 😱 really glad you tried it out
I studied Business Administration. It was a great experience to start a semester with no clue about your courses and three months later you’re able to pass an academic exam on this topic. I loved it so much.
At one point I added some language classes to my courses and chose Russian and English. Russian started from zero but English was writing essays, translating economical texts from English to German and vice versa and reading some classical literature (Dickens, Twain and Shaw). It shaped my love for the English language even more.
I could not choose my subjects in college, except for a few optional courses, one of them being "Evil Perpetrators in America" which was the most interesting one. We would discuss about crimes, trauma theory and trauma response in books, comics, historical events. Great course, amazing professor!
In response to your language course, I love language and learning different languages. I am currently studying three addition languages to my native English, with Swedish being my absolute favourite. It’s such a fascinating subject!
Hi Emma!!! I’m a double major in English and History with the minor in Philosophy!!! I’ve been in school for about 3 years now, with a gap year between the first the second, and I have changed my major/minor like 4 times (but I have always had English there). The way you felt about your biology courses is how I feel about the teaching courses I took my second year. I really thought being a teacher could work for me and I was VERY wrong. Sometimes it’s good to figure those things out to early though :)
What are you thinking about doing now?
@@bugtoes6169 i plan on applying to graduate school for either library and information sciences or english (not sure what exactly), i’m still figuring what i want out
It's so great to have you in Toronto now, Emma.🙂
It always depends on how much I love and enjoy this class with this teacher, before the subject itself.
I’m a psych major and it’s interesting to hear that the psych course you took talked about sexual stuff. In my university there’s a biology course that’s practically a sex Ed class that people take for easy units and the psych courses are more development focused and do a lot of analyzing research. Though my favorite non-major course I’ve taken is the class I’m taking right now on intro to gay and lesbian fiction. The discussions we’ve had on the readings are always so interesting and I’m happy I was able to take it before graduating
Your university sounds really similar to ours here in the US in terms of having so many courses to choose from. I was extremely indecisive when I first started college. I started my college career studying Physical Therapy, then I switched to Psychology, then Spanish, then finally settled on my original passion, Zoology which is what I got my 4 yr degree in. Then a few years later, I went to Nursing school and got an additional degree in Nursing, lol. Then 15 years later, during the pandemic, I took 3 online courses just for fun through my local university in Wildlife Conservation, Ornithology and Winter Ecology (back to my original passion, lol). It was so fun to be back in that learning environment and I had a blast! I think I will be a lifetime learner and I love that there is always an opportunity to have that learning experience no matter how old you are :)
I thought your remarks were very insightful. I hope you filled out those course evaluations at the end of each semester. I will make one criticism, though: when you talked about the geology course(?), about the length of days on other planets, you said you can't think of any circumstance where you would ever need or use that. What about poetry? What did Poe say about "night's Plutonian shore"? So beautiful. I understand what you mean about not caring about that stuff in a practical sense, but as readers and writers, that stuff is GOLD, baby. GOLD! 🌚🌕
Hello from British Columbia Canada 🇨🇦👍🖐♥️
I have a BFA. I needed a math or Science, I chose Biology because it is all memorization. Because I could draw I put little diagrams in my answer to "lifecycle of the angiospore and how air moves ..circulation is in bird lungs ...I used my coloured crayons. I got an A . The professor wanted me to join his enviro-tech program.
You hit it on the head about the essays being different, he told me how to write for the sciences. Knew that I was used to psychology anthropology philosophy and art history.
"Ho seguito un corso di italiano per due anni all'università, ma è da molto molto tempo che non parlo in italiano, quindi sono un po' arrugginita!" Here you go! Your pronunciation is perrrrrfect Emma!
Love your Italian, Emma! Thank you for the video about your experience at Uni, very interesting! 😍
I went to a high school, which was called a "gifted" school, where each class had a specific subject to focus on (we still studied all other subjects, but had more class time on the subject of our so-called class). We had to take an entrance exam for the subject we want to study (e. g. English, maths, chemistry, etc.) to get into this place. When I was in grade 9 I suddenly became very interested in biology and thought that would be a promising path. But when I had to choose between English and Biology exams (funnily enough the exam date and time for these two were the same), I chose English. And I got into the second English class in my high school, which was not so serious about us joining the 'Olympic' teams (in my country there is Olympic "competition" where "good" students join in, basically we would cram everything we can, take an exam, and if we could get high marks, like the top 3, we would be granted the title, and some 'scholarship'. So the first-class students were all in or forced to study and get their slot in the Olympic team.)
I had a choice, so I asked the teacher in the biology class if I could join their class, and she said yes if I really loved biology and wanted to try. And I joined them. And the following year was the most miserable time for me in terms of studying because I spent some time in my class, then some time in the biology one, I didn't really blend in either place and also realized that I sucked at biology. I asked myself so many times why I was so bad at it when clearly everything we were learning interested me. And when the 'competition' came and I failed, I felt like I did enough, because at least I'd tried and gone till the end. And though I didn't know what to do next, I knew I wouldn't have to go on with biology.
Then something else happened. The history teacher asked me if I wanted to study with the team, yeah, the Olympic team. I gave it a try, I got a medal in an "area" competition, but then failed at the national one because I was too stressed out I couldn't study with my best mind. It was in 12th grade, and the time this happened was January 2020. You guys know what happened next in all our lives. Still, it was a fun journey with the history team. I was thinking back and forth about which way to go when I applied for university, but that was only based on those three experiences: got into the English class, joined the Biology one, and got a small medal for the History team. My mind was that limited 😂 And... all the good universities are in another city, my parents wouldn't let me go due to my health condition, the pandemic, etc., so I stayed in my old hometown and chose the (supposedly) best university in this province. I'm studying business, which is basically the most common choice for anyone (in my country) who doesn't know what to choose (besides English, interestingly) 😂. And I'm not really happy with my study but I've met some of the best professors (in my opinion) who nurtured my will to study and learn. I got a really cool and kind prof who influenced me so much that I learned all the maths stuff by myself and passed his class. Also, I have plenty of time to read books (that I haven't the time to read when I was in high school) and try to learn everything else that I find interesting or necessary to me.
University was like the 'ultimate goal' that we high schoolers could think of. I'm not sad that it didn't live up to my expectation but I also think I'm not wasting the time I'm having, and it's always good to be able to learn.
I got my degree in accounting, but I was an undeclared major my freshman year. Three of my favorite general studies classes that I took were Greek mythology, psychology, and legal environment.
I love love love the raw honesty that it's so funny. 🤣 it makes you so relatable.
So interesting! In my country it's so different, we don't have that minor and major stuff, and I feel like we have SO MANY subjects. I study psychology, currently on 4th period, still 6 periods left and I have like 6 to 7 subjects per semester. (I'm from Brazil btw) I love the way academia works here tbh, psychology is such an unique course, I've never had to do a single multiple choice test, our grade comes from essays, projects, seminars, documentaries, they literally try out every type of alternative evaluation method you can think of, gotta give my professors credits for the creativity. Also the they arethe personification of the "humanities teacher stereotype", I've had great experiences with them, so passionate about their line of work and offer a lot of opportunities to work with them in research and extensions programs. I would be interested in experiencing academia in a country like Canada though, loved the video!
Hi Emma!! I'm a journalism and English literature undergrad in my senior year, but I've also taken a bunch of random courses out of interest with my elective slots. Here were my faves:
1. Madwomen in the Attic: Gender and Insanity in 19th Century British Literature (English)
2. American Girlhood: formation of girlhood in American literature (English)
3. 19th Century British Children's Fantasy (English)
4. Tracking the Romantic Comedy (comparative literature, so it was a film and literature analysis course)
5. Research seminar on Global adaptations of Shakespeare (English)
6. Introduction to Neuroscience (Neuro)
7. Asian American identity in pop culture (Asian American studies)
8. Introduction to Existentialism (philosophy)
9. US Gay and Lesbian History (History / Gender Studies)
10. Race and Society (Sociology)
11. Intro to Film Photography (Art Theory & Practice)
12. my French courses
hi! I'm italian and (apart from confirming it's arrugginita😅and being shocked at the speed of test correction of your italian teachers because apparently they only do that in foreign countries and can't manage to figure out how to do it in their own motherland🤦♀) I'm studying psychobiology / cognitive psychology at university! So far I've taken some biology/neuroscience related classes (applied biology, psychobiology and cognitive neuroscience), a cultural anthropology one, a statistics one and a bunch of different types of psychology (general, development, social, dynamic, work and personality). I'm halfway through my journey and I'm really enjoying it so far. Also, if I didn't get into psychology my second choice would have been english literature!
Thank you for sharing this, I've been curious as to what courses you'd taken, and your response to them.What a wonderful smorgasbord for a writer to have on board.
It hurts me that you had 2 years stolen by the concussion, and I admit to being curious as to how it came about, but I'm so, so glad you recovered so well, and thrive in the Book Tube world at least, if not yet in all aspects of life. That's a struggle we all have, always, of course.
Be well, stay safe, and namaste. Emma, you're the best.
All learning is valuable in some way,even in a dusty basement on a wet afternoon.I would have loved every second of that journey.Ciao Bella!❤️
As a philosophy student I totally get what you are talking about, but I can assure everyone that is interested in the subject, that it is possibly to study that field without engaging in pointless discussions. At least in Germany it's more common to have small classes that talk in depth about certain texts or ideas and that comes with a lot off bonus content about history, languages and politics.
My chemistry professor was so amazing that I took organic chemistry as well, I’m a business major. It’s truly amazing how a professor can make or break a class no matter how much you study. Some with Economics. I did great in macro economics and hardly passed micro economics because I had a different professor. This pattern goes on and on.. When you find a good professor no subject is too difficult.
Emma you've been looking so angelic the past few videos!
Because higher education is free in Denmark (you’re actually paid to study), the system is a little bit different. You’re not meant to figure out what you want to study at uni by taking courses from different areas. Instead, from day one you only take classes in your chosen subject or major (mine was English language and lit, yay!), and then if you don’t vibe with it, you just drop out, basically, and start again next semester. For all subjects there are mandatory courses and a ton of electives. That way, you end up having covered so much ground within your field of research by the time you’re finished with your degree which is great, although I definitely also see the value of dipping your toes into different areas of study as well, even if some of them do end up not being particularly relevant to your major. Some electives in DK are offered across subjects, so for instance I had electives that were really a part of the history, international business communication and American studies subjects. My favourite course at uni was probably just Advanced Brit Lit because LOVE.
I'm in my last semester of my Bachelor of Music with a concentration in Piano Performance and a minor in voice, and last night I submitted my application to do a master's in music history. My favourite class was a seminar I took last year on the sources of music scores that explored how music began to be written down in the Middle Ages, how written music moves from place to place, and how music publishing companies use sources. My favourite both because I learned a ton and it was super interesting, and because the prof flat out offered to supervise my MA thesis
As an English graduate, I also took an introductory biology course in college and thought I would love it just like I did in high school. (I did not). But I did take a course about plants and very much enjoyed it! We got to hear the stories behind each plant and learn the meaning of their name. (Latin is such a beautiful language.)
such an interesting video!! i'm only in my second semester of my sociology degree, but so far i've taken a philosophy course that is required for all new students at the university, where we also learn about argumentation, introduction to sociology, classical and contemporary sociological theory and social scientific method. here in norway, the semesters and classes are, to a degree, already chosen for you, though you can make some changes (not in the first year!). i'm not loving learning about the classical sociologists tbh, so i'm very torn between continuing with sociology or switching to either literature (nordic or english) or liguistics as i am endlessly fascinated by language
Another great video Emma, thank you! I'm currently exploring my educational horizons with liberal arts and it's comforting to hear you did something similar. Intro to humanities has been my favorite course so far. I'm grappling with eventually majoring in English like you bc at the end of the day, reading, writing, and analyzing such things have never ceased as a passion for me. Sending good vibes :)
The way you feel about philosophical/ethical conversations is how a lot of people feel about conversations about classical literature 😂