During orientation week, every student in the college of Engineering receives a handbook that’s about 150 pages. The handbook is your key to graduation. It contains requirements and flow charts for every major in the college. Everything from transfer credits to minors are inside the handbook.

At some point in the first year, students look through and gaze upon the liberal distribution requirements. Every engineer is required to take six liberal arts classes in order to graduate. The classes are all pre-selected and posted on a website that might actually be harder to understand than the handbook itself.

Professor Schwarz spoke about taking arts and music appreciation classes in college. He described them as “being friends that will walk with you through life.” In the 8th grade, I remember my music teacher telling our class that for some of us were taking our last music class. She was correct. I haven’t taken an art or music class since middle school. Between all the AP sciences and history classes in high school, I never had space for either.

Picking your liberal distributions can a little a tricky. Certain things are often emphasized to freshmen and sophomores about them. First, they should be classes where you get an A to help boost that ever so precious GPA. Secondly, that they shouldn’t be huge time sinks.

With these two criteria, it is easy to see why introductory economics and networks are usually chosen instead of arts and music courses.  Much easier to guarantee yourself a higher grade in a more traditional class than in a possibly subjective class. The same thing can be said about time needed for each class.

When deciding my final few liberal course, I am going to take the Professors advice, so that I can better appreciate some of the best creations in the world.