The summer semester is in full swing. With the first sessions ending and the second sessions beginning, students are reaping the rewards of preparing, catching up or getting ahead in their college careers.
While taking summer classes may not sound appealing to most students instead of vacationing, summer courses can actually help students catch up and even facilitate early graduation. Instead of basking in the sun at the beach, sophomore Kasey Keilty chose to take an on-campus summer course.
Keilty said she decided to take Anatomy and Physiology 1 because she had to “retake it to stay on track as a nursing major.”
While some students took summer courses to catch up with their major, others took summer courses because they decided to change majors altogether. Sophomore Andrea Tufano decided to take Introduction to Teaching during the first summer session, and Diverse Learners and their Families part 1 during the second summer session.
“I switched my major the second semester to Special and Elementary Education and I was behind a couple courses,” said Tufano. “I decided it would be better for me to take them over the summer than making them up next semester along with the other classes I need to take. It would be less overwhelming.”
While the course difficulty during the summer was equivalent to the difficulty of the academic year courses, the accelerated pace had a difficult effect on the students.
“The class was only five weeks long compared to 14 weeks, [so] it was much harder to keep up with the speed of the class,” Keilty stated. “The tests were on 5-6 chapters and there was so much information on it that was difficult to learn.”
With course difficulty rising due to the accelerated pace of the courses, students preferred to take online classes instead of the on-campus classes. The flexibility of doing coursework without a set schedule was appealing during the summer season, even without the social interaction with classmates.
“I liked that I was able to do it from my house and the flexibility of being able to do the work on my free time,” said Tufano. “However, I don't like not being able to talk to my classmates as easily as I could in a regular class.”
Keilty felt the same way and said she would have preferred to take an online class over the on-campus class. The only way she would take another summer class again is “if I had to or possibly if it was online, but I would not take an on-campus one again.”
Students splashed into summer with a summer course load, whether to catch up or get ahead on their majors.
