I will preface this blog by saying that this is not, nor will it be, my ultimate top 3 Swarthmore courses. After two years here, I recognize that I’ve barely scratched the surface in terms of class selection (not to mention courses within the Tri-Co…). Also, compared to some of my peers, I’ve barely taken courses outside of my major (pre-med courses notwithstanding)!
That is to say, take this with a grain of salt. 🙂
1. PHYS 3L/4L: General Physics I & II with Biomedical Applications
“The most important thing you can do to succeed in this course and others like it is to believe that you belong here, because
you do.”
– PHYS 3L Syllabus
Because this is my blog and I make the rules (I’ll cry if I want to!), I am counting both semesters of introductory physics as one course. All pre-med students take a year of physics, and because physics feels so removed from the “usual” biology/chemistry world, students are often wary of these more math-focused courses.
While math is used in this course, the main focus was building problem-solving skills which transfer to other sciences, and building connections between physics, chemistry, and biology. These skills were honed weekly on problem sets, applying the concepts covered in class to real-world biological examples. Some of the cooler applications were:
- (3L) Examining how a narrowing of blood vessels (aortic stenosis) impacts the heart.
- (3L) Calculating force output of various muscles when lifting.
- (4L) Taking our own electrocardiograms (ECGs) to better understand the electrical system of the heart.
- (4L) Modeling nerves as a series of resistors to understand why myelination is crucial to cell function.
After this course, I can apply physics concepts to biological or chemical phenomena, and I now know that just because we teach these disciplines separately does not mean they’re acting separately.
LING 050: Syntax
“Rather than me explicitly telling you what the theory is, we will gradually discover it ourselves.”
– LING 050W Syllabus
This single line in this course’s syllabus changed what I anticipated to be a challenging and dry course into one of the most fun and dynamic courses I’ve ever taken. Every Tuesday, we would review the previous week’s homework, and have a small lecture, though each class was filled with group work. The handouts often contained just enough data to guide our discussion and give us something to think about, and never too much such that it felt simple.
On Thursdays, we would continue that discussion and receive our homework assignment for the week. As a writing intensive (W) course, we had a paper each week, but it never felt too much; it also helped that I had a regular group (shout-out syntax group!) of friends who met each Sunday to discuss and work together on the assignment, encouraged by the professor.
The papers all involved analyzing some natural language phenomenon and tasked us with creating an analysis that fit the data. Writing papers about embedded clauses in Uzbek with only two pages of data given allowed me to understand what it really means to be a linguist, applying skills in class that will transfer directly to language analysis in the field. Also, I learned to use LaTeX in this course. Very useful!
LING 061: Structure of Navajo
“This course is designed as an introduction to theoretical issues in phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics that are posed by the Navajo language and its usage. Along the way, we will discuss aspects of Navajo history and culture.”
– LING 061 Syllabus
After taking phonetics & phonology and syntax my first fall, I took LING061 in the spring. Very interesting! We spent a couple weeks on each of the themes outlined above, and the class asked me to comprehensively apply my skills from previous courses. It was more lecture- and reading-heavy than syntax, but the papers still felt like great, challenging puzzles.
I knew nothing about Navajo before taking this course, and over the course of the semester I found it incredibly interesting to learn about the grammar of a language completely unrelated to anything I’d studied before. I also found great joy in learning about the Diné2 through an anthropological view.
By far the coolest part of this course was working with native speakers of the language who attended each class. Shout-out, Ron and Lorene! Learning to gather data from speakers is an integral part of linguistic research, and they were also great resources to ask if we had any questions about Diné bizaad3 during class.
I could go on and on listing more of my favorites (I even had to narrow this blog from top 5 to top 3 because I had so much to say about each class), but I hope that with this small collection I could share a bit about what makes classwork at Swarthmore so special.
