We’ve all been there. One semester your schedule is perfectly constructed, you’re taking classes that you love within your major, and then the next – chaos. You’re forced to add something that’s not only outside of your major, it’s so wildly different you’re not sure you can passit. You’re going to experience a lot of emotions on your journey to fulfill your out-of-left-field course requirement, emotions like…

1. Denial

Poli Sci’s not so different from English classes. You took French in high school, so Spanish is basically the same thing, right? Whatever you’re trying to convince yourself of, you’re trying hard. Because if you can make yourself believe you’ve got some preexisting skills or draw a tenuous connection to another class, you can totally pass this.

2. Anger

So your background in history did nothing to prepare you for physics and it is ABSOLUTELY YOUR PROFESSOR’S FAULT. And who even designed this curriculum?! You’re fully aware of the fact that it was you who signed up for this course but none of that matters because you’re so done with it.

3. Bargaining

The add/drop period is over and now you’re begging, either outwardly to your professor, or internally, all the time. Please, please, please, just let me get a C. I will never skip another class for the rest of my life if I can just get a C in this one. I will go to office hours every single day for every single class if I can just pass this one.

4. Depression

By this point you’ve probably cried a fair bit. Coffee has most definitely replaced sleep as your go-to method for replenishing energy. Your bed is full of notecards. You may or may not have stress-ordered thirty dollars’ worth of Chinese food and called your mom to do some more crying. Dropping out and moving to Switzerland is looking pretty appealing right about now. But you’ve got to stick it out just a little longer, because you’ve got this!

5. Acceptance

By now you’re well aware that you’re in over your head and that besides showing up and attempting the work, there’s not much you can do about it. You’ve prepared yourself for the possibility of having to retake the course. You might as well just accept your fate and take a much-needed nap.

There’s no easy way to get through a class that’s far outside your specialty. Math-oriented people are going to flounder in their literature courses, psych majors are going to struggle through history, and PT majors will be dragging their feet trying to endure statistics. But all of that struggling is just a part of college life, and at least we can all commiserate as a group. And if you put in the hard work and are lucky enough to get a passing grade, you can walk away with the satisfaction of knowing that despite all odds, you crushed it.