I once played a game at my youth group that involved eating an apple that was dangling from a string which was taped to the ceiling. The only trick was that we couldn’t use our hands to touch the apple. Then our youth pastor told us that if we ate the whole apple, including the core, our team would gain a 100 bonus points. At first I thought that eating the whole apple was disgusting. There was no way I was going to eat the core. However, when my turn came, I ate that apple, core and all.
You may be wondering why I told you this apple story. Well, I want to use the apple core to represent the core courses at Redeemer. When I was applying for university, I had this preconceived notion that I would only have to take courses in my area of study. But when I talked to the Redeemer reps, I realized that I would be taking many core courses in addition to my majors and minor.
What are core courses? Core courses are classes that are not in your area of study but are required for graduation. Some of the core courses include two history classes, two religion classes, two social sciences, two regular science classes, etc. The goal of these core courses is to give Redeemer students a well rounded education.
Now you may be thinking, ‘Why would I waste my time and money taking core courses when I know what I want to major in?’ I understand that core courses can be frustrating and annoying, but I find these courses to be worthwhile. I really enjoyed my HIS105 class and my ENG104 class. However, not all core courses are appealing. For me, the thought of taking sociology and psychology made me cringe. I’m not very good at analyzing the mind. But I’ll admit that although sociology class was not my favourite class, I did learn some very interesting things such as the fact that socialization differs from culture to culture, and how that affects the individual.
So, even though the idea of core courses may be annoying, remember that these courses allow you to dabble in each field of study without becoming a major or minor. Who knows, you may even end up switching your major because you enjoy a core course so much. If you’re still uncertain about whether or not this whole core course thing is a good idea, remember my apple story. At first the idea of eating the core sounds disgusting, but once you do it, you realize that the reward at the end is worth it.
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