I understand the idea that in order to become a well-rounded student, you need to take courses outside of your major, but I don’t see the point. I came into Quinnipiac University as a journalism major, yet I’m required to take a wealth of University Curriculum courses in order to graduate.

At the end of each U.C. course, students are required to complete a breadth reflection, something I’ve never heard of until I got to college. These reflections aren’t difficult, but they’re a waste of time. The prompt for the reflection poses questions like, if the course you took will help you with your educational objective, your personal quest and if you liked the class. Every time, I have the same answer, “Taking this course was an experience, however it does not relate to my educational objective.”

Completing the breadth reflection is basically asking someone to create a false opinion. What I mean is if you were in any U.C. class that poses no benefit to you, the reflection you give to the professor is all fluff and that’s what I hate about having to take a U.C. course to fulfill a requirement. 

We’ve all heard the phrase, “Fake it until you make it,” and I’ve been told this more often now compared to when I was in high school. It’s ridiculous to have to take a course while knowing that it won’t help you at all in the future. It irritates me more because the main objective of my major is to write the truth.

An example of having to lie my whole way through, from my experience, is taking sociology this semester. Throughout the course, we are required to do reflective writing on chapters about sensitive topics such as gender. We are also required to have an opinion about the topic and cannot say that you don’t. For every reflective writing assignment I’ve done, I’ve lied. “Fake it until you make it.”

However, there was one U.C. course that I chose to take, regardless of the requirement, because I felt it would go hand in hand with what I wanted to do in the future. It was Baseball & Statistics. The breadth reflection I wrote was genuine and honest because it was a class that I felt I didn’t waste my time in.

Quinnipiac should add more U.C. courses that pertain to a student’s major rather than having them take something drastically different. I think it would spark the students interest and be more beneficial to them than a course outside of their field of study. If there were more U.C. courses in communications I would undoubtedly be enrolling in those classes. Having to take the U.C. courses outside of my major is, in my opinion, a distraction from my educational objective. My objective is to enhance my writing and learn more about the different genres of writing to become a more well-rounded writer.

Being a journalism major, we’re taught to report and present the truth, but from taking these courses, I’ve felt obligated to lie.