Owen PolingJunior Biological Sciences Major and Asian History Minor When I was applying to Pitt, I had a decent idea of what I wanted to study. I wanted to study biology, but I didn’t know if I should take a more specific path, like molecular biology. I had even less of an idea of what sort of area I wanted to minor in. If at all. Some time has passed since then, and I am now a Biological Sciences major with an Asian History minor. This minor isn’t exactly something that connects all too well to my biology courses, and certainly surprises some people when I let them know that I minor in a discipline with a clear disconnect from my major. I thought for this Pitt Bio Blog I would explain what made me choose my minor, and give some general advice along the way.
The first step to choosing a minor is to consider what you’re interested in. In my case, I was exposed to this minor by accident, in a way. When I was enrolling for my fall courses of sophomore year, I was struggling to find a class to fill the last slot in my schedule; I was desperately searching for a class that would fill a Gen-Ed requirement. After searching for a class for what seemed like forever, I found a class called East Asian Civilization up to 1800 (HIST 0400). It filled a Gen-Ed requirement (HIST 0400 = IFN + (HS or REG)) and fit my schedule, which was a relief. I enrolled for the class and mostly forgot about it over the summer. School started up again and I began my fall semester of my sophomore year. Very quickly, I began to realize how much I enjoyed this class. What I was expecting to be an average course turned out to be one of my favorites for that semester. The course material was rich, the history was new to me and really interesting, and the professor was super engaging. I will note that the professor I had for this course has left the University, so I cannot comment on the current HIST 0400 professor and or course material. Anyways, my time in this class was really cool, so I decided to take the next part in the East Asian Civilization history courses, HIST 0401: Modern East Asian Civilization . This course was just as interesting and engaging as HIST 0400. After taking two really rewarding courses, I decided to seriously consider minoring in Asian History. The next step of choosing a minor is to do some research into the requirements of the program. There are a number of resources to do this. The major and minors fair is a great resource to get a face-to-face information session about all the minors available through the Arts & Sciences School. Department websites offer a very concise description of the minor requirements as well, which can give you a brief snapshot of scope of the minor and the courses. And of course, you can always go to department advisors to get a very detailed run-down of every requirement there may be in the minor. I chose to talk to the History Department advisors. I was told everything I needed to know about the minor and had a very positive experience. In the case of all history minors, not just Asian History, to complete the minor the student must complete two “survey courses”, which are very broad spectrum courses like Western Civilization 1 (HIST 0100), United States to 1877 (HIST 0600), etc. Then, the student must complete three upper level courses (1000+) in the same geographic area as one of the survey courses. The requirements for this minor are not too demanding, which gives you a lot of flexibility in scheduling and choice of course, but other minors may require a larger number of classes and/or very specific classes. For instance, the CS minor does require a few more credits (16) than other minors, while the Chemistry minor can take 17-19 credits depending on what courses the student takes. With all of this in mind, you should take the time to assess the course load of the minor. In my case, I was able to declare myself as an Asian History minor the first semester of my junior year without having to catch up on any classes to complete the minor in time for graduation. For me this minor is a very convenient option. It goes without saying that I have learned a lot about Asian history in my progress through this minor, but I have also gotten the pleasure of finding a new discipline that I really enjoy. Minors are a great way to have exposure to new, fresh material aside from your normal coursework. So, I encourage you to give some thought to minoring in something; you may find something you absolutely love. To Summarize
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January 2022
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