In my argument paper, I am arguing for the elimination of freshman seminar classes in the second semester of freshman year. As a second term freshman, I find it very frustrating having to go to a seminar class every week instead of taking a class that will actually be useful for my major. Being in a major that requires a lot of difficult classes to be taken before graduation, taking a class that won’t help me is a waste of time. A lot of people in intensive majors and minors end up having to stay in college for more years than anticipated because of the amount of required classes. Taking away a class like freshman seminar would help clear out time for a different, more useful class.

Also, in the class syllabus it is mentioned that the purpose of this seminar course is to help freshmen with transitioning and becoming familiar with staff and students. However, for second term freshmen, the transitioning was already made easier with the freshman seminar class in the first semester. Most of the students in my class are already familiar with the campus and the people and know where to go to get certain resources, making this class useless.  

In addition, I understand that the administration was flexible with us offering us multiple freshman seminar classes with different topics so that we could pick something that interests us, but most of us have busy schedules and do not get to pick what we want because our other, more important classes interfere. Since most of us did not even get the class we would have been slightly interested in, going to class is just unnecessary and unappealing. We could either be in a class we actually need during that time or we could be utilizing the free time to get ahead with the work we have. To see if other students feel the same way and as an attempt to support my claims, I set up a poll and I am going to interview different people from different seminar classes.

Although I do believe that these seminar classes are useless, I do think that it is important for the first semester because that is when students actually need a class that will help them transition and understand how the university works. Also, people may say that it’s not every freshman’s second semester in this school, a lot of people transferred in for the spring and need that transition. Although I agree that they do need a transitioning class, I do not think that it is necessary for returning students to be taking it as well because we had time to get used to the school during the first semester.