The Story
Freshman Seminars: Not Just Another Class
I had been excited to sign up for a freshman seminar since I had heard my tour guide explain the concept on Admitted Students Day. So excited, in fact, that I registered for two in my first semester (which is entirely unnecessary -- but the second one happened to also satisfy a GER requirement).
My excitement, however, was met with incredulity when I talked about my class choices to other incoming freshmen. Most saw the freshman seminar as just another class to knock out. An experience no more stirring than a GER class. Perhaps even a chore.
Perhaps for some people, that’s exactly what it was. But for me the excitement proved to be entirely justified -- my freshman seminars ranked among the most exciting experiences from my first year at the College.
In addition to satisfying the seminar requirement, many freshmen seminars also fulfill the College’s writing requirement. They generally focus on some specific, interesting topic, and, every now and then, one might even satisfy a GER. The real benefit of these classes, though, is that they introduce you to the workload of college while also offering a distraction from the more mundane classes you’re bound to take in your first two semesters.
Take the first of my seminars, for example -- Living with the Environment. I took it through the Sharpe Program, and I’m sorry to hear that it is no longer offered. The class was very free-flowing: each class essentially consisted of the fifteen of us sitting around a large table with our professor, participating in a discussion about our assigned reading from the night before.
There were no fixed lessons for us to learn; rather, we brought the questions and answers up ourselves throughout our discussion in the true Socratic tradition. Our serene, Hemingway-esque professor rarely intervened except to begin a new discussion or to challenge one of our assumptions. The hardest work came outside of class, when we had to read and write in preparation for the next class.
My other seminar, Introduction to International Politics, was very different. The out-of-class workload was also heavy, but the actual class was much more structured. Because the class could be taken as a substitute for a general introductory politics course, we followed a stricter lesson plan. As all seminars are limited to 15 students, however, the smaller size of the class led to some interesting situations. While most introductory IR courses end with a simulation of some sort, ours was truly extraordinary.
It was a simulation of Iran’s current pursuit of nuclear weapons. I was assigned to play the part of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, while my classmates got roles like President Obama, Secretary of State Clinton, and Nobel laureate Mohamed ElBaradei. The simulation would have proceeded normally, and probably a little bit dully, if it had taken place anywhere other than at the College.
It didn’t take very long before I got wind of impending attempts to “assassinate” me, so I formed my own Revolutionary Guards detachment. All of us world leaders held secret negotiations in places like the Daily Grind and the juvenile books section of Swem library. The student playing Hillary Clinton, normally a very nice person, suddenly became my bitter enemy.
The ending of the simulation could not have been more epic. As I walked to the final class of the exercise, I was stopped by Ayatollah Khamenei, who warned me that there were assassins armed with Nerf guns hunting for me throughout Morton Hall.
Needless to say, panic ensued.
I scrambled back to my dorm to get my own Nerf gun (why didn’t I think to bring it with me?) and returned to Morton. I spotted the two would-be killers outside my classroom, and a firefight erupted. Taking cover behind a water fountain, I managed to pick them both off from down the hall. I then stormed into class, where the UN Security Council demanded an explanation for my obvious breach of international law. Shocked though they were by my possession of a weapon, their meeting went on.
We were just about to finally reach an agreement when another student who I didn’t even know burst into the classroom, shot me, and made his escape.
I can’t guarantee that your freshman seminar will end in a Nerf war, but most of them are plenty of fun in their own way. Rather than dread your seminar, look forward to the opportunity to expand your thinking skills and to get to know a new professor. One year after explaining my seminar excitement to my fellow new students, I still consider them to be not only my best classes, but also the source of some of my best experiences at the College.
Photo by Joel Pattison.