h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

We have met (in the F&F), but I thought I'd leave a note here anyway as that may not count as knowing me. Hello.

Hey Bagpuss,

Never been to F&F, so I don't think it was there. Saw you recently in h2g2 christians though. Nice to meet you (er, again).

Hmmm... introductions. You can call me Dan if you want, I'm from the US, going to college in Virginia. Yourself.

oops, that was supposed to be a ? at the end.

Oops. I knew I'd seen you so I just guessed it was in the pub (usually a reasonable assumption). I'm Richard, in the UK and at Leeds University, though this is my final year so that may change.

what's your major?

Maths. In fact it's my only, not just my major.

Glad that's not the case with me, if the only classes I took involved business information technology, I'd go stark raving mad.

I can see the point of the whole major system, but my electives (non-maths modules) have been my worst subjects.

Not me, I cash in on my electives, mostly picked because they're of interest to me or generally not difficult. When it comes to academics, I'm a jack of all trades, not really great at anything, but above average in most things.

Mmmm, well I'm a mathematician, as has been obvious since GCSEs, where you can plot my grades against how mathematical the subject is and get a very good correlation.

How many electives do they let you take, then? I could only have done about 1/4 of my final year in electives if I'd wanted to.

Well, the admins of the uni seem to think we all need to be well-rounded people with a large knowledge base, so there are broadly based requirements in a bunch of subject areas. Despite their best efforts I can usually find an interesting class or two to take from among the required lists, generally a boost to the GPA and fulfillment of a requirement or two.

Like, for instance:
I take Creative Writing to fulfill an art requirement.
I take New Testament to fulfill a Cultural Value requirement.
I tak Entomology to fulfill some strange requirement I don't remember.

Next semester though, I think my elective days are over, hope I can take it.

Good luck.

It seems our uni wants us all to be ignorant of anything outside our particular area, as to take an elective, you need to sort it out so that it doesn't clash with anything and hope your exams don't clash either.

ugh, exam clashes

Yeah, it's bad enough when you get 2 on one day (or one on a Saturday). That doesn't affect me this year though, hoorah.