Required electives aren’t all that pointless

Everyone has to take classes they don’t want to. Required electives may be a pain, but they’re also a chance to bond: If two college students are put in a room together without knowing anything about each other, I can guarantee they’ll find common ground by complaining about classes they wish they didn’t have to take. It’s cathartic.

Aside from helping college students bond over their shared disdain for these ‘unnecessary’ classes, required electives actually have other uses. For students who complain about their freshman 15 (and sophomore 17) because they don’t have time to work out, physical electives have the benefit of exercising you — and you get a GPA boost because you just have to show up. For students who want to learn a second language, you now have an academic excuse to go eat exotic foods — take your friend, and impress them by reading the menu aloud. Taking a photography class? Watch your selfie game soar.

I dare you to find another class that lets you dress like a pirate for a grade (theater doesn’t count)

My pointless class was marching band. Every sweaty hour I spent at rehearsals paid off… eventually. Sure, it doesn’t have anything to do with my Linguistics major, but the opportunity to relieve stress and earn upper division credit meant my grades actually benefitted from this ‘pointless’ class. Behold, the face of academia.

I have a friend in Software Engineering who is taking a dance class, and I asked her why she would do that — aren’t Engineering majors busy enough? She must have been miserable, wasting all that time not doing homework, right? Nope. “I wanted to,” she told me. “If they offer it, why not?” For her, it was a chance to de-stress and find a community she could fit into. (As far as I can see, she did the whole university a favor. Nobody wants to be anywhere near an engineer with too much stress bottled up.)

Every day is a performance

Finding something you want to do, and actually doing it, makes the long list of unpleasant things you have to do a little bit easier to tackle. Misery is a choice, and as comfortable as it may be, it shouldn’t be a lifestyle. I’ve learned that unhappiness just creates more of itself, but if you can find the benefits in an unfortunate situation, it becomes a skill that yields a new reward every time. Just don’t tell my mom she was right.

Also, if you break down the tuition fees you’re paying, there are items like “health and wellness fee” and “student recreation fee” that you’re being charged. You might as well ask for all the things you already bought.