Any suggested courses to select while at Queen's. Which ones are the most interesting, as well as average boosters?

Film 110 isn't actually that bad. The exams are multiple choice and as long as you study well enough not hard to get a decent grade on, Matrix's part of the exam in second semester is particularly easy. And the unit tests they had this year were online so you could get together with other classmates and Google answers.

Weird I've heard first year ling and cogs are bird courses.

Human geography (GPHY102) was common sense, and social determinants of health is a joke and a half (HLTH101). The final and midterm are true and false questions only.. and it's common sense (quote from my prof: "War kills a lot of people.. so that's bad for health"). HLTH102 is easy as well if you took bio in high school.

I was wondering if someone has taken or knows someone who has taken CLST 129 (Intro to Archaeology) and could comment on what the course is like both in content and in difficulty. What is the main focus of the course: the history or the method? Also is the evaluation format multiple choice or essay based?

CLST 129 focuses mainly on archaeological methods and techniques, but the profs do use real historical events/objects/cultures, etc. as case studies and examples to illustrate the more theoretical stuff you will learn. So it's a blend of both history and method, although definitely heavier on the methods and theories than on the history. If you want more of a focus on history, you need to take CLST 101, which is pretty much pure history/classical studies.

Personally, I loved the course and found it very easy, but I'm passionate about history and classics. CLST 129 is one of those really divisive courses: students either love it and get great grades or they hate it and don't do so well. A lot of students really dislike the prof who teaches the course, Prof Reeves, but personally I feel that is because some first years are too immature to really appreciate how she challenges students and how she pushes for high academic standards. She is actually one of the best profs in the department. Overall I think when I took the course the final grades were pretty standard for most first year arts courses, meaning that about the top 15-20% percent of the class got 80% or higher, majority got somewhere in the 70s and some people got Cs and Ds.

Almost everything that you`re tested on comes directly from lectures and slides shown in class, so you really, really need to go to class and take good notes. As long as you're not a skipper, you're not likely to have any problems with difficulty. There are no essays in the course. The midterms and exams have a variety of questions, some multiple choice, some short fill in the blank type questions that only needed a few words or one sentence and then a few longer questions that can be answered in a paragraph or two.

I'm fairly certain that HIST 125 is only offered online, no? If I'm right about that, then I definitely wouldn't recommend that anyone take an online course in their first year. Online courses are great in certain situations, but in first year you really need the extra support, dsicussion and closer interaction with TAs that you can only get from a face to face class.

History exams, in all years, are ALWAYS essay/writing based. There is usually at least one long essay and then some shorter questions such as document analysis or IDs. I'm a history major, and I've only ever encountered multiple choice questions on a history exam once in all of the classes I've taken, and that was just 10 multiple choice questions at the beginning worth only 10% of the exam, and there was still an essay question to answer.

Same goes for POLS. I know that the exam for POLS 110 definitely doesn't have multiple choice and most POLS exams in upper year too are essays/heavy on the writing. When I took POLS, there were no tests, just an exam in Dec and another in April, two big essays each semester, a few smaller written assignments/essays and then 10 or 15% for participation. Course formats may have changed since I took the class though, so take what I'm saying with a grain of salt.

Personally, I really didn't like POLS 110 much, although I may be the odd one out in that because I know a lot of students worship the ground that Professor Rose walks on. The class wasn't hard, but I found it to be really boring and lacking in substance. I learned very little in that class compared to the huge amounts of learning I got from my other classes. Plus I find that something about POLS tends to attract students (a certain type of male students in particular) with HUGE egos, and so in POLS you tend to end up with a few annoying students who think they are God's gifts to humanity dominating discussions. That can happen in any discipline, but I find that it happens much more frequently in POLS, whereas discussions in history overall tend to be much more collaborative.

I know less about SOCY 122 because I didn't take it. I know the course has been taught by the same prof, Beamish, for over 10 years now and he is a cool guy. There are definitely several essays in the course. I'm not sure what format the exam is.

Sorry, no, I don't know too much about psych or cogsci in terms of the actual content. All I ever hear is how hard they are (I work at a job where we help/deal with a lot of first years, so I get to hear lots of griping about certain courses). The psych exam is definitely multiple choice, and I'm fairly certain the cognitive science one is too.