How to: Visit a Classroom.

Today a friend of mine, a campus tour guide and ambassador, had a prospie shadowing her, which meant bringing her along in one of our classes.

While this girl was lovely, and very interested in our school, I was sort of kicking the wall knowing that she had sat in on “Foundations of Learning and Memory,” a biology based psychology class with a brilliant, but awkward and tough professor, in a terrible windowless classroom. Also, I don’t know how interesting rats and pigeons are to someone who doesn’t spend all of their time reading psych textbooks.  Seriously future psych majors, be prepared to know a lot about the behaviors of pigeons and rats.

Anyway, that got me thinking about sitting in on classes. A common option for campus visitors, it can give you a great idea of what the typical class in college is like. So here are some tips for visiting classes at colleges.

1.    Try to avoid early morning classes.

While you, as a high school student, think of 8AM as downright luxurious, college students think it is the devil. You’re going to be in a room with sleepy students who might perk up around 10AM or so, but won’t be terribly active there. My first semester I had an 8AM seminar class in which getting discussion going was like pulling teeth, because we were all a little too busy gulping down large mugs of coffee to speak. When we met for study groups, we were vibrant and interested and chatty, but that 8AM time block made everyone miserable.

2. See if you can see a class you know about/are interested in.

Often when you’re visiting or shadowing there’s an agenda of things you have to hit on (see their dorm, see a class, eat lunch in a dining hall). Before you start off, ask them which classes they have that day, and even if it doesn’t exactly work with the time frame, if one is a lot more interesting to you (for example, maybe one class is “Introduction to Film Studies” and one is “Neuro-imaging,”) try to see it, even if that means tagging along to a second class. It’s hard to get excited about a classroom environment when they’re speaking a language you don’t understand (whether that be an actual foreign language, or jargon heavy lectures).

3. Try to avoid higher level/incredibly difficult classes

On that note, when you’re sitting in on a class, make sure you know what level the class is. An aspiring premed might whimper in fear sitting in Orgo 2. Remember that even if it is in your possible major, a lot of classes are going to be over your head. It’s not that the school or the program is too hard, it’s that you don’t yet have the background knowledge.

Another example, when my roommate visited our school she almost sat in on a class called “Fundamentals of Design” which is the research equivalent for the theatre major. It is, without a doubt, the most difficult and demanding class at our school outside of hard sciences (see, Orgo 2). She jokes that she wouldn’t have attended our school had she sat in, but I know quite a few potential theatre majors who switched after trying to take that class.

Make sure that you’re not seeing a scary weed out class. That’s going to leave a bad taste in your mouth and frighten you away.

4. Ask your host about the class and it’s quality.

      Sometimes the class you’re being brought too is just a bad class. Every school has them, and they’re a part of college life. So ask your host about the class. Do they like it? What’s good or bad about it? What classes do they like? Ask them, “If you could have taken me to any class, what would you have taken me to?”
Not every class is a winner, and sometimes you have to see a poor quality one, but know that there are great classes too.

       For example, the class a prospie sat in on is in the worst small classroom on campus. It’s a converted storage room or office, and it’s windowless and awful. But my friend (her host) made sure to point out the beautiful science center that is technically the psychology department’s home base (even though only the small seminars, research classes, and labs are taught there).

So when you’re sitting in, know that there are going to be some unavoidably bad classes. Hopefully you’ll see a winner, but even if you don’t make sure to find out what is typical. You can’t make a final judgment based on a sample size of 1.