Seminars

So, as a first year at RIT, you have to take Discovery, a one-credit seminar, and, if you're a GDD major, you also have to take GDD Seminar. Both of these seminars try to serve the same purpose, to make your transition from high school to college easier.

As far as I can tell, with Discovery, the effort is mostly too little too late. Now, in case you didn't know, your first week at RIT is spent doing orientation week. This fun little event puts you in an arbitrary group of people that are not of your major, with an orientation assistant that usually knows what they're doing, and tries to get you involved in RIT. Now, this may be your kind of thing. You may enjoy having a group of people that you can hang out with. You may enjoy having your own personal upperclassman to ask questions. You may enjoy all of the activities RIT has planned for you. Personally, all of the ice breakers made me want to cry. I found that spending Wednesday through Sunday doing silly orientation activities didn't do much for me. For one, I'd visited the campus already, so I knew most of this stuff. Two, I don't do well in large groups. I mean, our group had 16 people in it (not counting our OA), so it wasn't that huge, but it wasn't small enough to really get to know anyone. I found the idea of spending 5 days hardcore socializing and then having to dive right into classes exhausting, but it probably just wasn't my thing.

Anyway, the point with Discovery seems to be to extend that orientation week into the rest of the quarter. It seems to want to be an intro to the tools you'll use on campus, etc. The thing is, I still feel like it's not helpful. Orientation week told me things I already knew. Discovery tells me things that I either already can figure out, or are being covered in other classes. In my opinion, the bottom line is this: if you're having trouble, talk your professor. I feel like that would cover everything we're learning in Discovery. Now, it's only week 2 and I could be wrong, but I'm getting a very strong impression. Self-advocate, be able to figure things out on your own.

Now, the GDD seminar on the other hand, is almost entirely different. First off, you're with people of your major, so you know that you have common ground with these people. Second, Andy, if you haven't met him yet, is awesome. I know he teaches a lot of the GDD seminars, and he does teach mine. So far, this course has been about teaching you things you probably didn't know about the campus that would make it more useful. You know, stuff like "Here are the labs where you can print for free," "Here is how you get from this building to that building without ever going outside." It's very specialized and, as far as I can tell, very useful