Life at Williams - 1. The Classes
College life has been very interesting. I have had a blast overall, opening me up to many new experiences and meeting a lot of new people. This is the first post of a series of posts about different aspects of life at Williams
#1 - The Courses
My freshman year I took chemistry, psychology, multivariable calculus, and ancient Greek philosophy. I enjoyed all my classes, though not all to the same degree.
CHEM 155 - My chemistry professor was really excited all the time and always moved around constantly while teaching. He absolutely blazed through a lot of material, but at the same time, I felt like it was at a good pace, since he was really good at connecting previous ideas to new ones.
MATH 151 - Multivariable was my least favorite class, mostly since I had grown to dislike lecture-based math courses in high school. The professor was really great, but I just didn't like having concepts taught to me before actually using them. I believe I learn math best when I'm both learning and applying the concept myself at the same time.
PHIL 201 - Philosophy was really fascinating. We read a lot of Plato, Aristotle, and a variety of other English-translated Greek texts by Pythagoras, Anaximander, Anaximenes, Heraclitus, etc. The questions about epistemology, metaphysics, and morality we covered were really interesting. This course really opened my eyes to the coolest thing about philosophy - it's about everything pretty much. After all, a course that studies reality, knowledge, and right vs. wrong probably has principles applicable to almost any field.
PSYC 101 - Psychology was surprisingly a lot more fun than I had originally thought it was going to be. I had heard before that introductory psychology ended to be a huge, boring lecture class, and this was true, but the structure of PSYC 101 at Williams made my first psychology course a great experience. Although a lecture course, the course was structured into two-week segments.
Each segment was taught by a different professor who specialized in that field. In this way, we always had a slightly different experience, as teachers taught in different ways. We went over the basics of Neuroscience, Cognitive Psychology, Social Psychology, Developmental Psychology, and Clinical Psychology. I really though this course was a good overview of not only the concepts of psychology, but also a great introduction to the department in general, as we went over research different faculty were doing too.
#1 - The Courses
My freshman year I took chemistry, psychology, multivariable calculus, and ancient Greek philosophy. I enjoyed all my classes, though not all to the same degree.
PHIL 201 - Philosophy was really fascinating. We read a lot of Plato, Aristotle, and a variety of other English-translated Greek texts by Pythagoras, Anaximander, Anaximenes, Heraclitus, etc. The questions about epistemology, metaphysics, and morality we covered were really interesting. This course really opened my eyes to the coolest thing about philosophy - it's about everything pretty much. After all, a course that studies reality, knowledge, and right vs. wrong probably has principles applicable to almost any field.
PSYC 101 - Psychology was surprisingly a lot more fun than I had originally thought it was going to be. I had heard before that introductory psychology ended to be a huge, boring lecture class, and this was true, but the structure of PSYC 101 at Williams made my first psychology course a great experience. Although a lecture course, the course was structured into two-week segments.
Each segment was taught by a different professor who specialized in that field. In this way, we always had a slightly different experience, as teachers taught in different ways. We went over the basics of Neuroscience, Cognitive Psychology, Social Psychology, Developmental Psychology, and Clinical Psychology. I really though this course was a good overview of not only the concepts of psychology, but also a great introduction to the department in general, as we went over research different faculty were doing too.
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