Real ways to make learning rewarding

Penn is a great place in which to learn, and we're all damn lucky to be here. But as I noted in my column two weeks ago, many students are working too hard and for the wrong reasons, and they're missing out on the most rewarding undergraduate experience possible.

But it's not their fault.

We can see the end of the collegiate tunnel even as freshmen, and it's scary to contemplate that one day the Saturday night party and the Sunday morning hangover aren't going to be there anymore. The only thing that will follow us out -- along with the great memories, of course -- is our transcript. It might as well be tattooed to our forehead.

But how true is that?

That depends on what you want to do.

If you want to go to law school, well, you're out of luck, because your transcript and your LSAT score are the primary factors for admission. For example, Penn Law does consider a personal statement -- one page only. But they don't interview applicants, and that means you are your transcript, and there's not much you can do about it.

However, if you want to go to a non-law grad school, or especially if you want to get a job after Penn, you might be overestimating the importance of your undergraduate record.

Career Services Director Patricia Rose says that your grade point average, which doesn't have to be spectacular, only gets you an interview. You -- a living, breathing, thinking individual -- get the job by virtue of yourself. In this same vein, the appeal of an applicant with two majors and three minors over an applicant with just a single major is often negligible. It's not what you did, but why you did what you did that is really important.

"Regardless of what you're applying for at the end of the day, you need to interpret what you've done for the employer or the grad school. You need to say, 'What's important for you to know when you look at my transcript is ...,'" Rose said.

It is vital that undergraduates understand how their academic records will be viewed after college, and Penn should create a mandatory information seminar for all incoming freshmen to enlighten them. If students don't know what is actually important for their futures, then only ignorant rumors and assumptions will guide them.

If employers aren't dead set on the 3.97 GPA, triple-major graduate, then there is no advantage to unnecessarily bulking up your transcript.

College of Arts and Science Dean Dennis DeTurck agrees.

"I hear from alumni all the time [that] the best preparation they had for the person they became was not the fact that they had two majors. ... I think that's often a waste of time," he said. What was important was "that they really got engaged with some ideas and thought about them hard in speech and in writing."

Engaging with courses requires time and a concentration of effort.

"Four courses is plenty if you're really doing it seriously," DeTurck said.

To do enough reading, to care enough about a course and to get everything out of it, you have to devote more effort than just a "get the grade" minimum, and if you're overloaded you just can't do that.

If you want to make the most of your four years, I have a few recommendations.

- Don't double major, and especially don't earn a dual degree. You can explore second and third subjects deeply without trapping yourself in loads of major requirements.

- Don't take more than four courses a semester unless you absolutely have to.

- Take small classes. How much you actually learn from and enjoy a course has as much to do with class size as the professor. In the History Department, for example, 72 out of 77 courses rated higher than 3.6 were classes of less than 40 students, and of the 120 professors rated over 3.85, only 11 taught a classes with more than 40 students.

- Try taking a number of courses pass/fail. This system allows you to explore far from your comfort zone, and you may be a lot better at these foreign subjects than you had thought. If that's the case, you can always switch and take them for a grade within the first month or so.

- Go abroad. I have yet to meet someone who wishes he hadn't, but I have met many who wish they had.

- Always double-check academic advice, especially from parents and peers (including myself). Once you start down the wrong path, it's hard to get off it.

Don't think of your Penn experience as just a means to an end. Explore your ideas, develop new intellectual interests and take risks. Milk Penn for all it's worth -- you won't regret it.

Alex Weinstein is a junior history major from Bridgeport, W.V. Straight to Hell appears on Thursdays.

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