My tumultuous relationship with N&M classes

Satisfying the College of Arts and Sciences natural and mathematics distribution
requirement is tortuous for someone who thrives in the arts and humanities domain.

I will admit that I’ve taken a “blow-off class” to satisfy that cruel N&M requirement.

I won’t let myself do that again.

One of the purposes of the distribution requirement is to nudge students out of their comfort zones.

We defeat that purpose if we seek out classes that require minimum effort.

I used to pore over the course catalog, searching desperately for a tolerable N&M.

I wanted to rip the book in half and cry out, “But why? Can’t I just take another poetry class? I will never use quantum physics in a publishing company.”

The idea of slipping into a lab coat and taking my chances with fragile beakers and sensitive chemicals was daunting.

The idea of poking around a dead animal’s body to locate organs was sickening.

I would be much more comfortable discussing the implications of the semicolon in Ezra Pound’s “In a Station of the Metro” for an hour.

But in not accepting the challenge that the distribution requirements present, I am doing myself a disservice.

I want to encourage students to challenge themselves by taking courses in the departments that have previously scared or bored them.

Some students who are single-minded in their career paths refuse to branch out. I am guilty of this.

My horizons sometimes remain stubbornly not expanded.

But to make the most of our education, we shouldn’t confine ourselves to the study of things we like or the disciplines in which we are gifted.

The distribution requirements are meant to engage different modes of thinking, to foster new and surprising interests, to develop a diverse set of skills, to burst bubbles and to bring people out of them.

They are not meant to waste students’ time or threaten their GPAs, but I hear that complaint so often, even from myself.

But classes will always waste time and threaten GPAs if students don’t genuinely engage the material and give these classes the attention they deserve.

If I want to get something useful out of N&M classes, I will actually have to ask questions and meet with professors and not show up to class hungover.

What does your education mean to you? It has the potential to be so rewarding if people are willing to put in the effort.

College courses can completely reshape the minds that will allow it.

Embrace the opportunity to try something new, and don’t try half-heartedly.

Maybe we won’t emerge with that coveted “easy A,” but at least we will not have passively wasted our time on a narrow education.

So farewell, my sweet and undemanding blow-off classes.

And damn you, Department of Physics. I won’t let you intimidate me.

I am coming for you.

­— ambhendr@umail.iu.edu