During college, I took two “easy” electives that I regret immensely.
One was an online class called “The History of Comic Books.” I thought learning about Marvel and DC would be interesting and an easy A during a difficult college semester. Boy, was I wrong. This class was ridiculous.
I had taken online classes before and enjoyed them because they were something I could do during my free time. This class required me to watch online lectures on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday before midnight. Each lecture was over an hour long and had to be studied to a T, because a paper was due with each lecture.
This class was much more of a time commitment than any other online class I had taken previously. Every lecture required at least three hours to watch and write a paper over. There were also online class discussions that took place each week. I understand that it was my own fault for getting a C in this class because I never seemed to have enough time to get my assignments in as high-quality as my professor expected.
You should also know that I am a good student. I only got three C’s during my college career … which leads me to my next “easy” elective: Grammar Studies.
This was only a 200-level online course, and I had previously always scored high on grammar sections during tests. I thought, “Sure, as a public relations major I could always benefit from improving my grammar.” To my surprise, this was not a class about basic grammar like where to put commas in a sentence. This course was about graphing sentences!
This was probably during my most challenging semester because I had business classes as well as a 400-hour internship. Unfortunately, this led to another C being added to my college transcript.
It wasn’t until after I had finished these electives that I learned about something magical called “pass or fail courses.” This means you can take an elective that is not required for you to graduate as a simple pass or fail and it will not affect your GPA. As long as you pass the class, it will not affect your grades.
Moral of the story is, if your "easy A" course turns out to be not-so-easy, take it as pass or fail. Also, beware of online college classes.
