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#1 Scheduling
It is important as a Music Major to plan ahead from your very first semester when you’re going to take certain classes. Many of the classes in the Music Department are sequence based and are only offered every other semester (ie Music History, Theory, Aural Skills, etc). Some of these classes are even offered only once every couple years (ie Orchestration and Arranging, Counterpoint, etc.) Do yourselves a favor and study your catalog long and hard, and go to the office to check when each class is going to be offered. They have posted a spreadsheet telling when each class will be offered for the next four semesters. Trust me, if you do this, you will save yourselves a lot of headaches and you may possibly graduate on time *gasp*.
From personal experience, I have three pieces of advice that about General Education classes:
1) combine your intensives with gen eds.
2) get your gen eds out of the way early.
3) take some of your gen ed classes during the summer.
I know you’ve probably figured out by now that taking those pesky gen ed classes at the same time as trying to get through Theory, Aural Skills, and of course practicing your instrument, can be a pain. During the summer, you have more time to concentrate on them. I found that I got better grades on the gen ed classes that I took during the summer.
Finally, I think the best piece of advice I can give (of which most Music Majors don’t really heed) is this: do NOT overload yourself on credit hours! Yes, I do realize we have to take a million classes, but I speak from personal experience when I say it’s just not a good idea. I took 20 hours last year and it about killed me. Music Majors have so many other things going on outside of classes that we shouldn’t even think about taking more than 16 credit hours a semester. This is where taking summer classes comes in. Please, I know it sounds impossible, but trust me when I say taking 19 or 20 credit hours a semester is just not a good idea.
