Through the Looking Glass: Where have all the good courses gone?
So many unrelatd General Education courses, so little time
By Sarah Delia, staff writer
Posted on November 9, 2006

My palms are sweaty as I wait for the results to pop up on my screen. These next few moments will dictate a new year with the hope of fulfilling my passions, interests, desires and ultimately satisfy my looming future. I stare and wait to see who will be best fit to represent my ideas and most prepared for the job. The clock has just struck 9:15 a.m. and e-campus is ready and hopefully not liable to crash for the next 20 minutes as I scramble like eggs on a Sunday morning to pick my classes for the impending semester.

Keezell and Duke Hall are my second and third homes where I pitch tent quite frequently. Us English majors congregate within the walls of Keezell and discuss the books we’d rather be reading and in Duke, the art we’d rather be studying. But these discrepancies within our majors can be overlooked, for there is a light at the end of the tunnel; while we must endure reading or studying subjects we may not be too thrilled about now, they eventually bring us closer to what we are passionate about. Nevertheless, these GenEds are truly killing my college experience buzz, as I have to worry more about fulfilling the dreaded Cluster Three rather than getting into a Baroque art class I need for my art history major. Clearly, playing in a science lab for hours with a dead frog in slimy, yellow-colored water is worth the rising costs of tuition.

I understand that JMU finds it important for its students to leave as enlightened, well-educated and knowledgeable citizens versatile in many different subjects — but ironically enough, there appears to be a problem with the math.

Depending on what “package” a students picks, results in the various classes that must be taken in the concentration of math and science. Most liberal arts majors like myself pick lucky letter A, only requiring one math class — but there’s no getting around the two science classes plus a “possible lab,” according to the JMU Web site, totaling 10 credit hours. There are other possible ways of working within Cluster Three, as a new alternative was given out for the fall 2006 semester, yet the fact remains that in no other cluster at JMU does one have to take as many classes to fulfill the requirement. I figured that out all on my own without the help of Cluster Three, but from math drilled into my head from high school, middle school and even elementary: 10 credit hours is the greatest amount of classes that any of the clusters demand from a student, ergo, throughout the course of my general education, I will be devoting the most time to a combination of math and science — neither remotely close to what my majors entail.

While I’ll admit that the ISAT and HHS buildings do give me the creeps, I’m not quite at the point of gathering the entire village of Harrisonburg, pulling a Frankenstein, and burning the structures to the ground. The question of why a well-rounded education consists of an exorbitant amount of classes dedicated to one area of study boggles my mind. It’s true that nine credit hours are needed to fulfill Cluster Two: Arts and Humanities, but within that one cluster, there are there different categories that offer at least seven different classes to chose from. If JMU would like to expand the general requirements for science and math majors for Cluster Two, give me a ring — I have a great number of books to recommend and pieces of art to go see — just not until I have unraveled Package A and all of its glories.

Sarah Delia is an English and art history major who knows 1+1=2, and that the world is round.