A Guide to Choosing Electives
A Brief Guide to Choosing Electives
Lately, it seems like a lot of people have trouble deciding which elective courses they should take. With a big school like Western, there are just so many options and sometimes it may be hard to sift through all the different course descriptions on the academic calendar. Since most people don’t have the time to go through the calendar and are worried that choosing a course that sounds appealing based on the calendar may be risky, most people end up asking upper years about courses and making decisions based on whether an upper year student says a course is easy or hard (it’s ok, i’ve been there). So take what I or anyone else says with a grain of salt. Here are some guidelines to help you with making decisions for electives
1. Make sure you cover your breadth and essay course requirements. The academic calendar tells you the requirements you need to graduate. These requirements come first in terms of priority along with the courses described in #2.
2. Use your electives to take special courses you may need to enroll in certain upper year courses/professional & graduate school requirements (e.g. English is a pre-requisite for certain professional programs).
3. Recognize your interests and strengths. You should find something that you’re both interested in and are strong in. Having one without the other might not work out that well for you. If you have a strong background in music, it might be a good idea to take a music course. If you’ve had some music background, I’m sure you could find a course in the academic calendar that sounds interesting to you.
4. Ask several people about a particular course and ask more detailed questions about the course content. A lot of the times, I hear people say a certain course was “super easy” or “hard”. That tells me nothing. It could be hard because they didn’t study for the exam or take it seriously because it was an elective. Find out more information from people. Ask them about what topics they studied, how they were evaluated, how many hours they studied per week on it, whether testing is more focused on memorization or conceptual understanding etc...
5. Take what upper years say with a grain of salt. Some of them may love memorizing and recommend and course with heavy-memorization. If you hate memorization, this might be a very dreadful course for you and you may end up spending more time because you’re working through something you don’t like.
6. If you're not interested in a specialized course, you can also take survey courses that focus more on “general” or “basic knowledge”. These are usually first year courses or second year courses that are open to students from all faculties. For the record, you can take up to a maximum of 7.0 first year courses for your entire undergrad so if there are some first year courses that interest you, you can consider that as well. Why? If you’re an upper year, you will appreciate that taking a more general first year course will give you an overview or an introduction to a subject that you're interested in. It will give you more exposure to other disciplines and gives you a more well-rounded balance of courses. However, there will usually be more opportunities for evaluation. Depending on how you look at this, it good be a good or bad thing.
7. Take them seriously. Sometimes people think that because it’s an elective, they can slack off and cram last minute. These are still university courses and they might actually be harder than your regular courses (especially if you’ve chosen something with the intention of doing very little work).
8. Realize courses change every year. Even if the course code stays the same, new professors might teach the course, they might change the content of the course etc. so be open to that.
Electives I Have Taken
Psych 2990B is a prerequisite for a minor in psychology and is a course about how psychology applies to different fields like forensics, business, and military. Every week focuses on a different field and how psychology is related to that field (e.g. forensics, business, education, military). I like courses that are structured like this because I have a really broad interest in a lot of things. It's less reading (approximately 30 pages/wk) than first year psychology but the questions i found, were a little bit more detailed. There were 3 exams with each exam being weighed more than the last. It's a pretty straightforward course I think but if you are planning on taking the course, I would suggest paying special attention in lectures since he sometimes asks very specific details from lectures. My professor was Doug Hazlewood and I found him a very enthusiastic and effective lecturer. I found his notes pretty straightforward and the content relatively easy to understand.
Listening to Music 1102A/B is a music course open to non-music students. Lectures are 3 times a week and the classes are pretty unstructured. My professor (Dr. Henry Meredith) would bring instruments into the class and talk about them, give us pieces to listen to, and went through some basic music theory and history with us. We attended concerts as a class (usually small ones on campus) around once a week and we had to write concert reports for each of these concerts. The concert reports aren’t bad though since it’s a fill-in-the-blank format and it’s just a completion mark. There are also a couple assignments with many different topics to choose from. These assignments involving a bit of writing e.g. analyzing two concerts you heard, analyzing a particular work of music. I found the concepts very straightforward and I really enjoyed the course. I highly recommend listening to music if you have some background in music (e.g. gr.6 rcm piano or school band), you like listening to all sorts of music, and you don’t mind if the professor lectures in a more unstructured format and I think I would recommend it to anyone interested in taking a music elective. I found Dr. Meredith’s class very enjoyable.
Classics 2800A/B Greek and Latin Roots of English
This class is all about where words come from. We learned how to analyze 300 English words by looking at their origins from Latin and Greek (as well as some French and Spanish) roots and how they evolved over time so you will have the chance to pick up a little Latin and Greek.
I thought the professor, Dr. Matthew Carter was very scholarly and gave pretty interesting lectures.
He also took some time each class to cover an “Etymology of the Day” where he would explain the unique or unusual history of a particular word.
I found the evaluations were also very fair. Dr. Carter was very clear about what he expected us to know. Tests are short (15 questions) and mostly consist of multiple choice and short answer questions. Usually 5 questions will pertain to vocabulary from exercises (you are expected to complete about 1 lesson + exercises each week from the book, which for me, was about 2-3 hrs of work) so you can show your work for this. Multiple choice questions are weighed heavily so you have to make sure you’re accurate with these. Knowing the vocabulary notes in the book and to a certain extent, the lecture notes, is important for this part. I personally loved the course and the lectures, but I don't think it's for everyone. I would recommend Greek and Latin Roots if you don't mind memorizing hundreds of root words and vocabulary based on Greek/Latin terms and you have an interest in how words have evolved over time.
Religious Studies 1028G
My thoughts with this course is here: http://westernundergrad.weebly.com/religious-studies-1028g.html
I would recommend the religious studies course if you have some background knowledge of the Bible from a Catholic/Christian perspective (though the concepts I thought were pretty straightforward) and you have good writing skills. Since there aren’t many evaluations, there is little opportunity to “improve yourself” through this course. It is an essay course and the teacher I had was a little tough with marking. I think there are easier religious studies courses out there, but that’s just my opinion.
“Sports Physics” or Going Faster and Farther: the Science of the Sporting Environment
My thoughts with this course are here: http://westernundergrad.weebly.com/physics-2065.html
I highly recommend this course to anyone with some basic knowledge of physics (gr.11/12 physics) and an interest in sports. If you hate cycling, don’t take this course though since about a third of the lectures mention bikes haha! Unfortunately, this course is now restricted to non-science students :( meaning students in the Faculty of Science cannot take this course!
Courses I Have Not Taken (but have heard good things about)
Music Courses
Musical theatre, Intro to Jazz, and Post World-War 2 music: a lot of these courses are more "music appreciation" courses where you may have to write assignments and stuff, but you're marked more on listening to the prof in class, as opposed to how much prior knowledge you have on the subject
Science Courses
Search for Life in the Universe, Origins of the Universe, Earth’s Atmosphere (Physics 2070), first year astronomy
Classics
First year classics, Classics 2300 (Sports in Antiquity)
Note: some of these courses may be heavily memorization-based e.g. Search for Life so make sure you are ok with this before enrolling.
Conclusion
There are a lot of courses out there that many people like and that you can potentially do extremely well in. However, I think how well you will do depends a lot on your interest in the subject and of course, whether you put in the time and actually understand/memorize the material when necessary. Personally, I don’t think elective is a synonym for easy. I think you should take elective courses seriously if you want to do well. Hope this helps!
Lately, it seems like a lot of people have trouble deciding which elective courses they should take. With a big school like Western, there are just so many options and sometimes it may be hard to sift through all the different course descriptions on the academic calendar. Since most people don’t have the time to go through the calendar and are worried that choosing a course that sounds appealing based on the calendar may be risky, most people end up asking upper years about courses and making decisions based on whether an upper year student says a course is easy or hard (it’s ok, i’ve been there). So take what I or anyone else says with a grain of salt. Here are some guidelines to help you with making decisions for electives
1. Make sure you cover your breadth and essay course requirements. The academic calendar tells you the requirements you need to graduate. These requirements come first in terms of priority along with the courses described in #2.
2. Use your electives to take special courses you may need to enroll in certain upper year courses/professional & graduate school requirements (e.g. English is a pre-requisite for certain professional programs).
3. Recognize your interests and strengths. You should find something that you’re both interested in and are strong in. Having one without the other might not work out that well for you. If you have a strong background in music, it might be a good idea to take a music course. If you’ve had some music background, I’m sure you could find a course in the academic calendar that sounds interesting to you.
4. Ask several people about a particular course and ask more detailed questions about the course content. A lot of the times, I hear people say a certain course was “super easy” or “hard”. That tells me nothing. It could be hard because they didn’t study for the exam or take it seriously because it was an elective. Find out more information from people. Ask them about what topics they studied, how they were evaluated, how many hours they studied per week on it, whether testing is more focused on memorization or conceptual understanding etc...
5. Take what upper years say with a grain of salt. Some of them may love memorizing and recommend and course with heavy-memorization. If you hate memorization, this might be a very dreadful course for you and you may end up spending more time because you’re working through something you don’t like.
6. If you're not interested in a specialized course, you can also take survey courses that focus more on “general” or “basic knowledge”. These are usually first year courses or second year courses that are open to students from all faculties. For the record, you can take up to a maximum of 7.0 first year courses for your entire undergrad so if there are some first year courses that interest you, you can consider that as well. Why? If you’re an upper year, you will appreciate that taking a more general first year course will give you an overview or an introduction to a subject that you're interested in. It will give you more exposure to other disciplines and gives you a more well-rounded balance of courses. However, there will usually be more opportunities for evaluation. Depending on how you look at this, it good be a good or bad thing.
7. Take them seriously. Sometimes people think that because it’s an elective, they can slack off and cram last minute. These are still university courses and they might actually be harder than your regular courses (especially if you’ve chosen something with the intention of doing very little work).
8. Realize courses change every year. Even if the course code stays the same, new professors might teach the course, they might change the content of the course etc. so be open to that.
Electives I Have Taken
Psych 2990B is a prerequisite for a minor in psychology and is a course about how psychology applies to different fields like forensics, business, and military. Every week focuses on a different field and how psychology is related to that field (e.g. forensics, business, education, military). I like courses that are structured like this because I have a really broad interest in a lot of things. It's less reading (approximately 30 pages/wk) than first year psychology but the questions i found, were a little bit more detailed. There were 3 exams with each exam being weighed more than the last. It's a pretty straightforward course I think but if you are planning on taking the course, I would suggest paying special attention in lectures since he sometimes asks very specific details from lectures. My professor was Doug Hazlewood and I found him a very enthusiastic and effective lecturer. I found his notes pretty straightforward and the content relatively easy to understand.
Listening to Music 1102A/B is a music course open to non-music students. Lectures are 3 times a week and the classes are pretty unstructured. My professor (Dr. Henry Meredith) would bring instruments into the class and talk about them, give us pieces to listen to, and went through some basic music theory and history with us. We attended concerts as a class (usually small ones on campus) around once a week and we had to write concert reports for each of these concerts. The concert reports aren’t bad though since it’s a fill-in-the-blank format and it’s just a completion mark. There are also a couple assignments with many different topics to choose from. These assignments involving a bit of writing e.g. analyzing two concerts you heard, analyzing a particular work of music. I found the concepts very straightforward and I really enjoyed the course. I highly recommend listening to music if you have some background in music (e.g. gr.6 rcm piano or school band), you like listening to all sorts of music, and you don’t mind if the professor lectures in a more unstructured format and I think I would recommend it to anyone interested in taking a music elective. I found Dr. Meredith’s class very enjoyable.
Classics 2800A/B Greek and Latin Roots of English
This class is all about where words come from. We learned how to analyze 300 English words by looking at their origins from Latin and Greek (as well as some French and Spanish) roots and how they evolved over time so you will have the chance to pick up a little Latin and Greek.
I thought the professor, Dr. Matthew Carter was very scholarly and gave pretty interesting lectures.
He also took some time each class to cover an “Etymology of the Day” where he would explain the unique or unusual history of a particular word.
I found the evaluations were also very fair. Dr. Carter was very clear about what he expected us to know. Tests are short (15 questions) and mostly consist of multiple choice and short answer questions. Usually 5 questions will pertain to vocabulary from exercises (you are expected to complete about 1 lesson + exercises each week from the book, which for me, was about 2-3 hrs of work) so you can show your work for this. Multiple choice questions are weighed heavily so you have to make sure you’re accurate with these. Knowing the vocabulary notes in the book and to a certain extent, the lecture notes, is important for this part. I personally loved the course and the lectures, but I don't think it's for everyone. I would recommend Greek and Latin Roots if you don't mind memorizing hundreds of root words and vocabulary based on Greek/Latin terms and you have an interest in how words have evolved over time.
Religious Studies 1028G
My thoughts with this course is here: http://westernundergrad.weebly.com/religious-studies-1028g.html
I would recommend the religious studies course if you have some background knowledge of the Bible from a Catholic/Christian perspective (though the concepts I thought were pretty straightforward) and you have good writing skills. Since there aren’t many evaluations, there is little opportunity to “improve yourself” through this course. It is an essay course and the teacher I had was a little tough with marking. I think there are easier religious studies courses out there, but that’s just my opinion.
“Sports Physics” or Going Faster and Farther: the Science of the Sporting Environment
My thoughts with this course are here: http://westernundergrad.weebly.com/physics-2065.html
I highly recommend this course to anyone with some basic knowledge of physics (gr.11/12 physics) and an interest in sports. If you hate cycling, don’t take this course though since about a third of the lectures mention bikes haha! Unfortunately, this course is now restricted to non-science students :( meaning students in the Faculty of Science cannot take this course!
Courses I Have Not Taken (but have heard good things about)
Music Courses
Musical theatre, Intro to Jazz, and Post World-War 2 music: a lot of these courses are more "music appreciation" courses where you may have to write assignments and stuff, but you're marked more on listening to the prof in class, as opposed to how much prior knowledge you have on the subject
Science Courses
Search for Life in the Universe, Origins of the Universe, Earth’s Atmosphere (Physics 2070), first year astronomy
Classics
First year classics, Classics 2300 (Sports in Antiquity)
Note: some of these courses may be heavily memorization-based e.g. Search for Life so make sure you are ok with this before enrolling.
Conclusion
There are a lot of courses out there that many people like and that you can potentially do extremely well in. However, I think how well you will do depends a lot on your interest in the subject and of course, whether you put in the time and actually understand/memorize the material when necessary. Personally, I don’t think elective is a synonym for easy. I think you should take elective courses seriously if you want to do well. Hope this helps!