Click. Look. Sigh. Click. Inspect. Hmph.
It was the middle of August, and I was wasting away a gorgeous summer’s day trying to replan my academic endeavors in the fall. With my head originally full of dreams of literature and history courses, reality came crashing down when I happened upon the General Education Requirements tab in SCORE. Feeling like I had no other choice, I went to the course offerings website and began browsing for courses that fulfilled the many distribution requirements I had yet to do.
Click. Examine. Scowl. Click. Survey. Sigh.
I was sifting through the numerous quantitative reasoning and science and technology courses offered at Princeton this fall. Unfortunately, despite the plenitude of choices, I could not find a single class description that truly enticed me and made me feel that I absolutely had to take the class. Instead, I went back through the possible offerings, recalling the negative reviews and less-than-flattering monikers my fellow Princetonians had bestowed upon the “everyone is taking this solely because it’s an ST/QR” classes. With witty nicknames like “Stars for Stoners” or “Rocks for Jocks,” was it any wonder I was despairing of my choices for these classes?
Let me start out by saying that I understand and support the intent of the distribution requirements. The distribution requirements are a wonderful way to guarantee that all of us graduate from Princeton with a broad-based liberal arts education. However, the content of the courses that fulfill distribution requirements leaves something to be desired. Although many Princetonians have positive experiences in classes that fulfill distribution requirements, many more pass out of the requirements while not enjoying the experience or taking the class pass/D/fail. The uselessness of liberal arts majors being forced to take STs and QRs that they have no interest in is a running joke among my friends. Likewise, one of my former classmates, a biology major, bemoans the literature and the arts classes that he had to endure, citing the total irrelevance of the literature he was reading.
Taking classes in areas or fields you have never encountered or that are far outside your planned major can be — and usually is — a valuable experience. However, by offering courses for the distribution requirements that are narrow in scope and not universally relevant, the University is missing an opportunity to enhance the educational experience of a Princeton undergraduate education even more.
Although receiving a Princeton A.B. requires mastery of valuable skills like critical thinking, the degree is not vocational in nature. Despite the fact that Princeton students are graduating with the invaluable skills of an excellent liberal arts education, the majority of students will only have taken a few classes that will help them survive in the real world outside of their careers. Offering a broad selection of more universally relevant courses would allow students to fulfill distribution requirements while also receiving a deeper breadth of knowledge and perspective that could assist them in everyday life.
Though Princeton does offer freshman seminars that meet these criteria — like The Chemistry of Magic or Art and Science of Motorcycle Design — these are only available to a minuscule number of freshmen, severely limiting their use for distribution requirements. Princeton could take inspiration from some of these freshman seminars and offer classes like them for all students. The University could have an ST modeled off the Introduction to Wines course so popular at Cornell or an offering that teaches about the chemistry of cooking. There could even be courses in basic automobile mechanics to teach us the skills necessary to get out of a roadside breakdown.
For QRs, the University could have courses on logic puzzles or chess instead of forcing uninterested students to take calculus, physics or random offerings from the astronomy department. Business courses for non-economists would allow students to better understand the business world that many graduates will become a part of. Princeton should also prepare students to pay their bills and balance their checkbooks. While some have been doing this for years, many of us are clueless in this endeavor, and having a QR to remedy that lack of knowledge would be incredibly useful for our financial futures. Finally, we could allow students to fulfill LA and social analysis requirements through culture courses about the numerous countries where Princetonians study abroad, allowing students to gain a deeper understanding of today’s globalized world.
These types of courses would be relevant for many years after we walk through FitzRandolph Gate. With offerings such as these, students would graduate having taken universally relevant courses that gave them a better perspective on how to successfully deal with life after college.
Kelsey Zimmerman is a sophomore from Glen Allen, Va. She can be reached at kzimmerm@princeton.edu.
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