Sam Bieler | If only I’d known

If you ask a graduating senior for advice about Penn, you tend to get some truly heartwarming pieces about slowing down and enjoying life more. To that I say, its easy to slow down when Van Pelt Library is no longer your kitchen, study and bedroom. “Slow down and enjoy the journey” is good advice, but as a freshman — scared, confused and wondering what on earth quantitative data analysis means — my response would be, “Slow down? How do I start up?” With that in mind, I now present everything that I wish I had known as a freshman.

First and foremost, upperclassmen are your best source of information when planning your academic life at Penn. You will start meeting upperclassmen with similar interests early and often in groups, classes and just plain milling about on Locust Walk. Whether you want to get your foot in the door with a great professor or simply to spend four years avoiding any course that even hints at math, there are juniors and seniors who have spent the last three or four years doing just that. They know which professors will change your entire world view and which ones will make you question your will to live for three hours a week.

Even more importantly, they know the best way to handle requirement courses — courses that drag students kicking and screaming back into fields of study that they swore they would never take again after high school. This was driven home for me freshman year after a particularly bruising semester filling the formal reasoning requirement. I was complaining about the course I had taken to a junior friend who detailed how she had fulfilled the requirement while inflicting minimal damage to either her sanity or her GPA. This was a conversation I should have had at the beginning of the semester.

Speaking of requirements, get them done early. There are two reasons for this and I will illustrate the first with a little story. Adrienne Benson graduated this year after receiving an award for her political science thesis, so it is safe to say she has no problems writing. Even so, she spent the first semester of her senior year being taught to write in a Penn writing seminar. Talented professor aside, the idea of being “taught to write” as a senior who has already written dozens of papers at Penn was every bit as frustrating as it sounds.

But even more important than that, requirement courses can alter your whole Penn career. When I entered Penn, I knew I was going to be a political science major. Then I took political science, history and criminology courses. Now I am a double major in history and criminology. Things can change pretty quickly once you actually start taking classes, and since you have to fill these requirements anyway, why not spend your first two or three semesters seeing what it would be like to be a communication, geology or math major? If you find a new favorite major, great. If not, you still have all your requirements done and two years to take all your favorite major classes without having to worry about the general requirements.

Finally, don’t plan every moment of your four years. I took my favorite course freshman year by accident. Literally by accident: Penn had two classes named “Strategy, Policy and War” and I picked the wrong one. That professor gave me my first work study job. I met the professor who is currently my history adviser after picking a course to fill a general requirement almost at random.

So, ask your friends, fill those requirements and don’t be afraid to throw caution to the wind and take a few courses at random just to keep it interesting. Remember: even if you make mistakes — whether you spend two years exclusively taking history courses before realizing you want to be a chemistry major or you spend freshman year in a dance troupe before realizing you belong in student government, these experiences will be a central part of your college experience.

Sam Bieler is a rising College junior from Ridgewood, N.J. He is a member of the Nominations and Elections Committee. His e-mail address is sbieler@sas.upenn.edu.

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