About the author: Rohan graduated with a full International Baccalaureate Diploma in 2012. He moved from Northern California to the Midwest for college at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. He’s currently majoring in Biomedical Engineering and plans to attend medical school. The academic requirements for both engineering and pre-medicine can be demanding. Rohan’s previous guest posts addressed the importance of food and the lessons learned from snow. In the following post, he discusses the academics of college:
The school part of school should not be ignored. Most of the lower division undergraduate classes have student instructors (SIs) that hold optional sessions outside of class to go over homework, material covered in class, or exam reviews. Go to them, they help. Also, do not feel ashamed in getting a tutor if you feel you need more help with the material then regular lecture or the SI sessions are proving. The Department of Student affairs offers tutors, which are older students, in a wide variety of classes that can be scheduled for up to 5 free hours a week. My Organic Chemistry tutor is amazing and she can help you too. Most classes are also MediaVision’ed, or recorded and posted online, so if you wake up late or are sick you won’t miss out on lectures.
A unique part about Case is the SAGES program that is a collection of writing seminars on topics from the natural world, symbolic world, and the social world. The classes are a [graduation] requirement for Case students and are a way to make writing a more engaging experience. Topics can range from Neuroscience and Fuel Cells to the history of Berlin or fly fishing. At its core, it’s a writing class and aims to improve your communication skills. Don’t be let down if you don’t enjoy your SAGES courses – just get through them. I hated my first one and the second one wasn’t terrible.
[CMC Note: Rohan is finishing his second year at Case Western, surviving SAGES, where he joined a spring trip to Africa with the chapter of Engineers Without Borders and completed a hospital internship in Cleveland.]
