What modules should I do this year?

[Benjamin]

I've changed my mind on this about 10 times over the past couple of months, so I was wondering if anybody here had anything to recommend.

Basically, my degree is Social Anthropology with Linguistics, and I'm having to do a 'second' second year this year since I changed my degree at the start of last year and hadn't done Social Anthropology before that. They won't let me do third year Linguistics this year either, since I don't have honours entry for Social Anthropology yet. So basically, in addition to having to do SA2001 and SA2002, I also have 80 free subhonours credits to amuse myself with this year.

Over the past two years, I've done:

SA1001 and SA1002
LI1001, LI1002, LI2001 and LI2002
FR1001 and FR1002
GM1003, GM1004, GM2007 and GM2008
SD1002

(My original degree was French and German).

Any ideas folks?

[Power Metal Dom]

Psychology? Philosophy? i took them to fill things up and enjoyed them.

[ONeill]

I guess it depends with what fits into your timetable and how comfortable you are with other subjects. There was an IT course offered by Comp Sci when I was last around. I believe it was worth 20 credits and was very basic. That might help to ease the load a little if you don't fancy taking on too many completely new subjects.

[MelissaL]

Check out some of the other social sciences too, like (human) geography or IR, and psychology as already suggested. These are good for giving you alternate viewpoints for similar areas in social sciences.

That said, I would strongly recommend psychology as there might be some language development aspects that would be helpful.

[wild_quinine]

I can't recommend Philosophy enough. Here are my list of reasons:

• It is a fun 'what if' subject.
• It teaches critical thinking better than any other soft science I've come into contact with.
• It's not a high pressure subject.
• It helps to evaluate the reasons behind decisions, rather than simply accepting them at face value.
• You can put as much or as little into it as you see fit. Life getting you down? You can afford to be slack, and still pass. Find yourself drawn into the subject? You can spend hours working at it, and really feel the difference at the end of it.

And last, but not least, you should strongly consider taking Philosophy because there are too many people in the world today who are literally unable to cope with hypothetical situations. Anything you can do to improve the average ability of mankind in this regard would be a notable investment in humanity.

I don't know if Philosophy taught me any skills, but it refined them greatly. It is no exaggeration to say that I use the skills I honed in Philosophy every single day.

[Thalia]

The psychology of language and psycholinguistics are really interesting topics but unfortunately, unless it's changed recently, they aren't covered in first year. There may be some of it in the developmental psych part of the course but it'd be rather basic. I actually did my third year review essay on the topic of language acquisition - considering what aspects of linguistic knowledge are innate by looking at instances where language has developed without social influence, one really good example being the development of Nicaraguan Sign Language.

To be honest, I would choose psych over social anthropology anyday - particularly if you have a more scientific mindset. I took both right through first and second year but the philosophy aspect and lack of scientific control in their studies just put me off soc anth. It was quite interesting in first year though when the main focus was really just 'hey look at these interesting cultures'.

[GuyIncognito]

I would agree about psychology, although I would also say to bear in mind, if you lack a science background, you may struggle with some parts of the course which expect some knowledge of biology. I know arts students who felt that it was difficult to keep up. Having said that, it was four years ago now, so the course may well have changed.

[Thalia]

I wouldn't say that - I didn't even take biology in school and I managed fine. The staff tend to be pretty good at helping you out if you get too confused anyway. I always found that the good thing about psych was that it was pretty balanced in terms of arts and science related topics - everyone had one or two topics that they struggled with, depending on their background, but there was plenty of help out there.

[GuyIncognito]

Well, it is something I've come across, so I still think it may be something the OP would wish to consider. It wasn't intended to suggest everyone without biology will struggle.

[ct3012]

Take a history subject! I did first year Modern History as a filler subject and really enjoyed it (although my degree is in Med History so I might be biased). The first year topics are from the Reformation up to the American and French Revolutions, and you might find that the social history aspect of the courses fits in with SA (I'm guessing at this point, because I'm not sure what it is you study exactly with SA).

[Garnet]

I wouldn't really recommend 1st year IR modules as a filler, most people don't seem to enjoy them, but they might have changed - second year was much more interesting but then you probably can't take them.

[donpablo]

I took Psychology as a filler module for my 1st year. I've never had any biology background and I found it really easy to pick up so don't let that put you off. Seems like the most natural thing to take to go with your Social Anthropology.

The IT modules are ridiculously easy yet amazingly some people still struggle with them if they aren't in the least computer literate which is something to bear in mind. But then again if you arent computer literate maybe it's more of a reason to do those modules!

My 2 cents

[Benjamin]

Interesting ideas folks, thanks!

It's certainly the case that I lack a science background. In fact, I probably have less of a science background than most arts students in St Andrews. My school allowed people to opt for 'single-award general science' (i.e. the minimum) at GCSE, which I did. This prevented me from doing any science subjects later on, and I didn't do maths post-GCSE either.

I hadn't really considered doing anything psychology modules until this thread, perhaps because I assumed it would be 'too scientific' for me, so it's interesting to see these different views on the subject here. And whilst I'm sure it could overlap significantly with linguistics, psycholinguistics has never been a particular area of interest of mine within linguistics, so I hadn't particularly considered it for that reason either. Still interesting though.

I think I was slightly put off philosophy at school -- mainly because I did one philosophy module at AS-Level and got a D. No doubt it would be rather different here though.

I think I'm veering towards some history modules at the moment, probably either Modern History or Scottish History (or both), but chances are I'll change my mind again before Advising. I'm also thinking about second-year English, as they may be taken as stand-alone modules, and the first semester involves learning to read Old and Middle English and studying Chaucer, which is the kind of thing I tend to get excited about.

[sandwiches]

The first semester 2nd year English module is really good. I did first year English and hated it, but I liked the 2nd year module much more because it focuses more on a much smaller number of works (instead of expecting you to read 2 novels per week, as in 1st year). If I were you I would do either that, art history or a language. It is hard though, I tend to change my modules a fair number of times as well.

[kerryflet]

Definitely take second year Scottish History!!!! It was brilliant when I took it last year. Also, second year Psych is fantastic for people doing linguistics courses, as there's a whole section on the evolution and mechanics of language in humans and animals. (I started off doing a Psychology degree, have since changed to History, so I've done both.)

[JenBain]

If your degree is linguistics it might be interesting to study one of the more off-the-wall languages. I've known of people in linguistics taking biblical greek or hebrew just out of interest. Also I really enjoyed first level Italian, and it wasn't a particularly heavy work-load.