College students usually struggle to balance schoolwork, a job and a social life. Some of the classes we take throughout college will help us succeed in the future, while others can just be a waste of time.
Students who choose to pursue a career that doesn’t require anything other than basic math skills should not have to spend their time stressing out about passing their college math class.
Our majors often reflect our interests and skills. I chose to major in journalism, not only because I love to write and I love the news, but also because writing was one of my strongest academic areas growing up. What wasn’t my strongest academic skill growing up? Math.
I already completed my general education math requirement after taking Statistics for Life Sciences last semester, but the school that I am transferring to requires all students to take two college-level math classes before transferring. I am taking a trigonometry class, surrounded by students who generally excel in math.
Though my statistics class was far from easy, I was able to see how information is displayed, and I learned how to become a better critical thinker. Meanwhile, in trigonometry, I’m stressed as I struggle to figure out the cosine of pi and how it is going to help me in the future as a journalist.
I can honestly say that the majority of my stress this semester has come from taking a math class that has no relation to my major, and I think a lot of students can say the same for themselves.
In high school, students are only required to take math up to Algebra 2. Then, they make the choice whether or not to continue with their math education before attending college. The skills learned up to Algebra 2 should be enough to help students in any job that doesn’t require extensive math skills.
Colleges should allow these students to take classes in other fields that will help them in the future instead of making it mandatory for students to take math courses. For example, I want to go into political journalism, but because I’ve had to take math requirements, I haven’t been able to take as many political science classes as I would’ve liked at Pierce.
After college, most students who took math requirement classes unrelated to their career field will forget everything they learned in those classes. All they will remember is how stressed out they were while they tried to pass the class to maintain a good GPA when they could have learned and retained valuable skills in classes that would’ve helped advance them through their career.
