I am in my sophomore year in college, and up until a few weeks ago I was convinced that I was also beginning this year as a sophomore credit-wise. I was pretty excited for next semester since I knew that I had enough credits that, if I did even a moderate amount this semester, I would become a junior by credits at the beginning of spring semester… only to find out that, when I went over my advising worksheet, I am, in fact, already a junior. I have 60 credits, the exact amount you need to be considered a junior. I felt a little weird after I found that out, which was a slightly odd feeling, since I was very excited to be a junior next semester, which would still be before most of my pod-mates in Cedarwood would achieve junior status. I’m now a junior even earlier than I wanted to be, which is pretty great and could potentially mean that I could graduate early (probably not, but we’ll see what happens). 

I realized pretty soon that I was attributing too much of my identity, and my pod-mates’ identities, to our credit amount. It makes me glad that credit amounts aren’t publicly available, because I feel like there would be a whole lot more of this if everyone could see each others’ credit amounts. I would think that everyone would probably be more judged, and people would sort themselves into cliques, of a sort, by how many credits you have. Hopefully, this dystopian version of EMU will never come to be, since people shouldn’t be valued like that. It just feels weird to me, even if these rankings aren’t publicly available. 

This brings into question, is there a better system to determine eligibility for graduation rather than credit amount? What if there was a system where there was just a set list of classes that you have to do for your major and minor, as well as a certain number of electives and core classes that you have to take to graduate? Now, this is fairly close to what EMU does currently with the advising worksheet that gradually fills out as you take more classes that you need. This hypothetical model would also make it a lot harder to transfer in credits from other colleges or even AP classes, which is already hard enough to do in some colleges. As much as I feel that credits are not necessarily needed for a college model, it does certainly seem to be the best model for most colleges to go by, which is probably why it has stuck. 

In conclusion, no matter if you are behind on credits, or you’ve gone above and beyond, it really doesn’t matter in the long run. As long as you have the determination and drive to graduate, earlier or later, it will all end the same for everyone. Especially for incoming freshmen, you have around four years for you to get your classes and credits in; you’ve got plenty of time, so don’t worry too much about it. Everything will work out, and credits are just a stupid number.