You're approaching your junior year, and you can finally focus on what you came to college for — your major classes! Finally done with random GE's where your teachers grade too hard and you play "Candy Crush" the entire time. You check your DARs to see what classes are available for your beloved major and you realize you still have to take... wait for it... one more cultural analysis GE.

*Cue sad music*

This frustrating dilemma brings me back to the question I find myself asking every quarter: Why am I forced to take classes that do not interest or benefit me in the slightest? And why am I forced to take SO many of them?

After complaining about this issue to my good friend at Amherst College, he informed me that he and his fellow students can take any classes for GE credit. He explained how this system was implemented to provide students with the opportunity to learn what they find important, and not conforming to some irrational age-old system that forces chemistry majors to learn about sociology and communications majors to take laboratory classes.

For both innumerable and obvious reasons, I strongly believe that UCLA should, without hesitation, change the dated General Education system to a more dynamic and progressive form of class selection.

A contemporary utilitarian system offers freedom in curriculum options. Students will have the chance to take the classes required in their majors and will motivate students to choose instruction where they feel deficient. Such a system would provide more opportunities for advanced learning, improving competency in their field, and contribute to success in their chosen careers. Moreover, if you are like me and have no idea what you want to do with your life, this system would also allow students to take classes of genuine interest and may help guide their professional path.

The current GE system also fails to emphasize the learning of new material. More often than not, the classes we are forced to take rehash old concepts from high school or present skills that we would gather nonetheless throughout the course of our academic careers. This principle again begs the question: Why take classes we don't need? If the GEs aren't a redundant refresher of old material or unneeded explanation of a future skill, the topics are generally useless towards actual careers and superfluous to our college education.

The school board would argue, I'm sure, that a general education aids students in the accumulation of a broad knowledge and to draw connections across a range of courses and disciplines. If you are a UCLA student, however, you most definitely have experienced the pain and frustration of the quarter system, a system defined by me as a 10-week program in which students must "cram" in information as quickly as possible for their first of nine midterms for a 10-week course, then losing all the information retained (and a piece of your soul) immediately following the final.

More simply, mandatory GEs are simply a waste of time in a quarter system setting because the presumed goal of providing students a "broad knowledge" is not achieved because the fast-paced system inherently fosters poor memory retention.

How can students be expected to put in full effort to remember information that they simply do not prioritize? Ultimately, the current system robs students of unique opportunities to enhance their interests and explore new ones. I am well aware that by writing this article, that I, a noble student, will most likely change nothing. But in the alternative rare case, I propose a new system — a system that grants students flexibility in their selection of classes that not only expands their knowledge, but also reinforces the importance of the fundamentals.

Don't get me wrong. A general education is important, but Gene Block, if you're listening, for the sake of all UCLA students, let's make this a little more interesting.