Dear Class of 2017,
Welcome to Brown University, land of the liberal and home to the Open Curriculum. I’m sure many people have congratulated you on your success thus far — you’ve earned it. You’re at an incredible institution filled with a concentration of creative and unique people you’ll probably never again have access to after you graduate.
As most of you recognized in your college search, one of Brown’s most endearing qualities is its Open Curriculum. At Brown you are free to take math or not take math. If English isn’t your thing, take your science classes. No other university will provide you the academic freedom and opportunities that Brown will.
But there are times when that freedom comes with a price. We can get sucked into the Open Curriculum, which is more or less void of any real guidance or structure. We can take gut classes and classes S/NC, tailoring our schedules to the rigors of material or professors rather than to our interests and goals. It’s easy to waste your time here without realizing you’re doing it. Don’t do that. I wish someone had said a few things to me regarding this. Here are a few tips I never got.
First, do everything you can to understand yourself and your interests. This is one of the most important things you can do early in your career at Brown. Do you love to write? Do you love to build things? Do you want to speak Swahili?
Brown has a place for whatever your interests are. Knowing yourself and what you love will help you choose classes, pick professors, decide where you want to intern or potentially work some day and impact the extracurriculars and activities you could be involved in.
You might think to yourself, “Pshh, I already know what I love.” Well, I doubt that. Ask yourself again and keep asking yourself. None of us is old enough to be sure.
Second, lots of people will tell you that “you’ve got plenty of time to figure it out” — and that’s simply not true. Sure, first-years have four years, but when you break it down, that’s only about 32 classes for the average Brown student. If you consider the fact that Brown requires you to declare your concentration by the end of your sophomore year, subtract half of those credits, and I call what you’re left with “the exploration period.”
The exploration period encompasses the 16 to 20 classes you have available during the first half of your college career to tease your interests. You cannot, under any circumstances, afford to waste this time. It is the only time you have to explore yourself and your interests academically. Take this from someone who learned the hard way.
I think I would’ve loved to be an economics or Business, Entrepeneurship and Organizations concentrator, but I hadn’t taken any classes that fulfilled the requirements and couldn’t afford to take four straight semesters of required classes. ECON 0110: “Principles of Economics” was held at 9 a.m. As a first-year, I decided that was too early in the morning for me, so I dropped it. When I reconsidered taking it sophomore year, I made the same evaluation. Had I put a little more time and effort into considering my interests and myself, I would have done something different.
Finally, don’t take classes because they’re easy or because you need a filler class in your schedule. I’ve done that, and as a junior with 16 chances left to take great classes, I regret it. I’m now struggling to find a way to fit all the interesting classes I want to take, as well as my concentration requirements, into my remaining semesters.
Brown is far and away the best undergraduate university in the Ivy League because all faculty members are required to teach. Each professor is brilliant in his or her field and has something to offer that you’ve never heard and won’t hear anywhere else. If you’re scared to take the class, consider auditing or taking it S/NC. Don’t forgo a great class so you can sleep in.
The bottom line is that Brown is an exceptional institution filled with exceptional people that offers exceptional opportunities to its students. Four years isn’t a lot of time to figure out your interests and where you might want to take the rest of your life. Use the considerable resources at your disposal and figure it out — because I guarantee you will regret it if you don’t.
Daniel Delaney ’15 would love to offer anyone advice based on his clearly misshapen college career thus far. He can be reached at daniel_delaney@brown.edu.
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