Recently, I’ve been taking my hardest class at EMU so far: CHEM 405, Thermodynamics. I’m no stranger to hard classes, having taken Analytical Chemistry last semester, as well as some VACA classes last year that were a little out of my comfort zone. However, “Thermo” puts all of them to shame in terms of difficulty. 

Now, I’m not trying to scare people out of taking these harder classes. Quite the contrary actually; in general, if you have an opportunity to do things that are out of your comfort zone, trying to seize those opportunities is a good thing. While you’re in college, you have so many opportunities to learn things that you most likely won’t get anywhere else. 

When I first started Thermodynamics, I was surprised at how easy it started out. It was mainly a refresher (with some more advanced applications) of some of the things that I had learned in General Chemistry. However, once we got into some of the new stuff, things started getting hard, and quickly too. There was a brief moment of panic that I had at the difficulty (and by brief moment I mean about a week), where I wasn’t sure what to do with myself. However, I did manage to come up with a few tips and tricks to help myself along the way, and now I’m actually slightly enjoying the class. It’s still a challenge for sure, but it’s kind-of a nice challenge. It really keeps my brain active, and I’m able to learn stuff for my major as well, which is nice.

The first thing I learned very quickly from this class is to spread out the work. Due dates have pretty lengthy gaps of a week or two in between each, which is nice, but there are multiple assignments to work on in that one to two week period. I found that doing the work as it is assigned instead of letting it pile up works super well for me. I was a huge procrastinator before this class, but I think developing these better habits will not only help me for this class, but for future classes and the future in general as well. 

I also found talking to others to be helpful. A lot of people use this advice regularly, but I think most people don’t do it correctly. It seems like when someone feels confused, they talk to a friend in the class, and they just get the answers without taking the time to understand what they are talking about. However, I learned very quickly that I was going to need to understand what was going on in order to understand other things for the class in the future. If you don’t really understand something and you just keep going in the class without stopping for a bit to go through it in depth, you will find that your lack of understanding will snowball very quickly, which is what almost happened to me in this class. Luckily, with the help of some classmates, I was able to get back on my feet and get on track with the class again.

In conclusion, yes, hard classes are annoying, but they shouldn’t be glossed over because of that. Without putting in the appropriate amount of time, effort, and understanding into any given class, you are going to find yourself very lost, very quickly. But if you take the time to really learn the material, then your hard classes will turn into something pleasantly challenging rather than feeling like you’re drowning.