I am a transfer student at California Lutheran University and when I was making my schedule my first semester here I noticed a long list of core classes that I had to take in order to graduate.

While some of these core classes seemed interesting most of them felt like a big waste of time considering my major and emphasis. I am a communication major with an emphasis in public relations and advertising, and taking marine biology did not seem to interest me in the way I wish it did.

While these classes are educational and challenging, I think to myself, “When am I going to need to know about marine biology five years from now? Are these core classes really needed to graduate? How many is too many?”

According to the Cal Lutheran website, “These general education requirements are the true strength of your degree. Some will overlap with courses in your major, while others will expose you to different areas of study.”

Joan Griffin, dean of college of arts and sciences at Cal Lutheran, said that Core-21 does have a purpose.

“Because CLU is a liberal arts institution, rather than a tech school, we have liberal arts requirements. The Core 21 website explains how CLU imagines that tradition,” Griffin said in an email interview. “I think that even a technical or specialized professional education can have variety, but likely would include fewer disciplines than a liberal arts education.”

While I agree with the idea that we should study different areas, aren’t there enough areas in my major to explore?

“Core-21 complements and enhances the expertise of your major. The future holds big challenges — to solve them, you’ll need to see connections where others don’t. By applying knowledge from outside your major, you’ll be able to approach issues from multiple perspectives,” the Cal Lutheran website said.

I totally agree that the future will hold challenges and as a soon to be graduate and I am nervous for that, but I seriously cannot understand why I need to take math when I graduated high school so that I never had to open a math book again. Math is the type of subject where you either get it or you don’t, and sadly I don’t so when I found out I needed to take a math class to fill my requirements, I was less than happy.

Another thing with the core requirements is you have no idea what type of professor you are ending up with, you could read about the class and totally end up with a bad class, mixed with a bad professor, messing up your semester and stressing you out about your grade over a class that is not even in your major.

According to the website, Study, an article titled “Why new college students should take classes outside of their comfort zone” listed the top reasons for taking classes as avoiding burnout, expanding your horizons, meeting new people, getting a fresh perspective, preparing for reality, fulfilling requirements, boosting your GPA and learning new skills.

I agree that some classes are helpful, but I think ultimately it should be up to the student to decided what classes to take,and if we want to broaden our knowledge on a new topic isn’t that what college is all about?

My advice to younger classmen is to try to fulfill these core classes with the classes that seem most interesting to you, also look up the professor and ask around to other students to see what he/she is like and to get REL-100 out of the way take summer REL-100 with Dr. Doyle!

Jessica Gilbert
Staff Writer
Published May 4th, 2016