It definitely felt like everyone was shopping into the wee hours of the night \u2013 organizing, scheduling, and mapping the most efficient routes in order to snatch that golden seat! The hype is well deserved because there\u2019s a plethora of engaging and wonderfully taught classes (don\u2019t get me wrong \u2013 you\u2019ll also run into a handful of classes you\u2019ll dread with professors you don\u2019t want at your birthday party) and only a handful of semesters to finesse them into.<\/p>\n I only had some light shopping to do since sophomores are required to declare their concentration (major) during their fall semester as well as organize a list of intended classes that will fulfill your requirements. I also anticipated my laziness and tried to counter it before I left for Vietnam \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n These are the classes I\u2019ll be (most likely) taking this semester:<\/p>\n Spanish 50 \u2013 Writing and Performance<\/strong>: An advanced language course designed to strengthen and develop competence in written expression. Close reading of texts in literary and non-literary genres will help students refine personal style. The performance of short excerpts of plays, combined with advanced work on oral expression and phonetics, will help students increase their fluency and ease of expression.<\/p>\n Hopefully this will prepare me even more for my summer abroad\u2026knock on wood\u2026keep your fingers crossed!<\/em><\/p>\n Ethical Reasoning 24 \u2013 Bioethics<\/strong>: Bioethics is the study of ethical issues arising in efforts to maintain and restore health, and, more broadly, with charting humankind\u2019s future in an era of both technological advances and unmet need. We will try to reason our way through moral dilemmas that pit health against freedom, prevention against rescue, and the claims of those with competing needs when life itself hangs in the balance. The course will emphasize ethical issues involving health that arise at the global and population levels, particularly those involving peoples and regions with the greatest burden of disease.<\/p>\n Although Gen-Eds are typically not respected by most students, I\u2019m really glad Harvard\u2019s liberal arts educational system gives me a little push out of my comfort zone and encourages me to take classes that I wouldn\u2019t normally enroll in. Most of the fun facts I drop in conversation stem from these Gen-Ed gems!<\/em><\/p>\n Chemistry 27 \u2013 Organic Chemistry of Life<\/strong>: Chemical principles that govern the processes driving living systems are illustrated with examples drawn from biochemistry, cell biology, and medicine. The course deals with organic chemical reactivity (reaction mechanisms, structure-reactivity relationships), with matters specifically relevant to the life sciences (chemistry of proteins, nucleic acids, drugs, natural products, cofactors, signal transduction), and with applications of chemical biology to medicine and biotechnology.<\/p>\n Pushing through my second semester of orgo\u2026wish me luck because I\u2019ll need TONS of it!<\/em><\/p>\n Physical Science 3 \u2013 Electromagnetism, Circuits, Waves, Optics<\/strong>: This course is an introduction to electromagnetism, digital information, waves, optics and sound. Topics covered include: electric and magnetic fields, electrical potential, circuits, simple digital circuits, wave propagation in various media, microscopy, sound and hearing. The course will draw upon a variety of applications to the biological sciences and will use real-world examples to illustrate many of the physical principles described. This course is part of an integrated introduction to the physical sciences intended for students who plan to pursue a concentration in the life sciences and\/or satisfy pre-medical requirements in Physics.<\/p>\n I absolutely avoided all physics in high school, but I found myself really enjoying Physical Science 2 so I\u2019m really looking forward to this class! It\u2019s VERY well organized and I\u2019m obsessed with the professor (Logan McCarty<\/a>). Here\u2019s a student review on the Q guide <\/a>of Physical Science 2: <\/em>There’s a lot of infrastructure to help out if you’re having trouble, Logan is great, Melissa is hilarious, and the problem sets and midterms are manageable. The final was tougher than the midterms though so watch out.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sometimes optimization correlates with maximization. This was the principle I used when booking my flight back to Cambridge at the beginning of this Spring semester. After spending the majority of my J-term (January term\/Winter Break) in Vietnam, I still wanted to be able to come back to campus and rub it in EVERYONE\u2019S face that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4466,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37381],"tags":[29785,599,37385],"class_list":["post-2502","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-jeanies-blog","tag-academics","tag-class","tag-shopping-week"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/collegeadmissionsstudentblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2502","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/collegeadmissionsstudentblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/collegeadmissionsstudentblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/collegeadmissionsstudentblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4466"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/collegeadmissionsstudentblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2502"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/collegeadmissionsstudentblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2502\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2510,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/collegeadmissionsstudentblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2502\/revisions\/2510"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/collegeadmissionsstudentblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/collegeadmissionsstudentblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/collegeadmissionsstudentblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/collegeadmissionsstudentblog\/files\/2012\/01\/courses.cs50.net_1.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\n