Hey everyone. I was just trying to plan out some courses and what I may be taking in future years. I've been thinking about pursuing a minor in maybe linguistics or psychology, but I'm afraid that it will be really difficult to do while fulfilling the required courses for my program. I'm in hon bio right now, and I was wondering if going for a minor really has any benefits. I'm not sure what a minor in linguistics or psychology would do for me, but atm I am thinking about pharmacy...so most of my courses are prereqs for that.

Choose Linguistics, it's way cooler learning about languages.

I cannot speak as to the level of difficulty for psychology at McMaster because I did my undergrad psyc at U of T, but its definitely fun, eye opening and a bit of a life changer if you take the right courses.

There aren't really any benefits but I minored in psych because I'm really interested in it so I wanted to take a bunch of psych electives anyway, might as well get a minor for it.

As a Linguistics double major I can tell you its super easy. And I don't think you need to take any language courses to fulfill minor requirements, which I've always found to be the most difficult.

Just pick whichever interests you more, take a couple classes of each and see what has the best work load/is something you really enjoy.

I took psych x03/xx3 and ling a03/aa3 in first year. Overall, I really liked linguistics, except for historical linguistics ( X_X). I kind of wanted to take some second year courses from both psych and linguistics, but with all the prereqs for pharm I kind of don't have space :'(.

I can't even remember what historical linguistics is. Aside from the intro courses, you can take courses focusing solely on what your favourite parts of linguistics were. There's phonetics, phonology, syntax, semantics, morphology etc. Child language acquisition is also really interesting and its cross listed with psychology. Maybe just take a few courses for interests sake and don't focus on trying to make it a minor as well. You'll never really do much with a minor anyways unless you were intending on going to teacher's college and using it as a teachable.

Originally Posted by katrinabell

I can't even remember what historical linguistics is. Aside from the intro courses, you can take courses focusing solely on what your favourite parts of linguistics were. There's phonetics, phonology, syntax, semantics, morphology etc. Child language acquisition is also really interesting and its cross listed with psychology. Maybe just take a few courses for interests sake and don't focus on trying to make it a minor as well. You'll never really do much with a minor anyways unless you were intending on going to teacher's college and using it as a teachable.

Yeah...I'm kind of feeling I took the "lazy way out" by doing honours bio, 'cause a lot of my friends are in biochem/molec and it seems that what I chose is not as hardcore. I took psych 1b03 because I heard Dr. Day was an amazing lecturer, and that the follow-up course, Positive Psychology, was great. Can anyone attest to that?

Originally Posted by Angoose

Yeah...I'm kind of feeling I took the "lazy way out" by doing honours bio, 'cause a lot of my friends are in biochem/molec and it seems that what I chose is not as hardcore. I took psych 1b03 because I heard Dr. Day was an amazing lecturer, and that the follow-up course, Positive Psychology, was great. Can anyone attest to that?

You only took the lazy way out if you're not really interested in bio and are more interested in a more "hardcore" program, but are doing bio because of less required course/less work. If you're genuinely interested in bio and would take it regardless of how "hardcore" you think it/other programs are, then it's not taking the lazy way out, it's doing what you like

Personally, I would never take another class with Dr. Day. He's definitely a good lecturer, but I hated his testing style. It forced you to memorize random, pointless/useless information instead of focusing on the concepts, and it really took away from how interested I was in the subject matter (I took abnormal psych with him). It got to the point where I'd rather read about the information myself on my own time than take the class for credit, so that I could focus on the important stuff and not on what percentage of people a research group from Winnipeg thinks might have disorder X, especially after he spent ages emphasizing how inaccurate those percentages are.

look into the undergraduate calendar for your honours biology program as well as the minor you're interested in.

if there are a lot of tough courses, it might not be a good idea to overload yourself.

having a minor displays your personal profile and tells your future employer/interviewer about your interests in other subjects aside from your major.

if you decide to pursue a minor early on, you have lots of time to plan out your courses for the remaining years and spread it out so it's not too heavy.

Originally Posted by nerual

You only took the lazy way out if you're not really interested in bio and are more interested in a more "hardcore" program, but are doing bio because of less required course/less work. If you're genuinely interested in bio and would take it regardless of how "hardcore" you think it/other programs are, then it's not taking the lazy way out, it's doing what you like

Personally, I would never take another class with Dr. Day. He's definitely a good lecturer, but I hated his testing style. It forced you to memorize random, pointless/useless information instead of focusing on the concepts, and it really took away from how interested I was in the subject matter (I took abnormal psych with him). It got to the point where I'd rather read about the information myself on my own time than take the class for credit, so that I could focus on the important stuff and not on what percentage of people a research group from Winnipeg thinks might have disorder X, especially after he spent ages emphasizing how inaccurate those percentages are.

Hm, your comment on Day makes me want to switch into Linguistics now. That'd take out 8:30 classes for second term. Memorizing random facts seems like a huge waste of time...especially since I have Orgo2Ob3 in the same semester...and that's already a lot of stuff to wrap my head around I hear.
Well, I am actually interested in bio (except bio1m03 kind of turned me way off about ecology...and those frigging apes from How Humans Evolved grrr!!!!!! I only ended up taking bio2b03 and c03 though this year, since I wanted a little more time to focus on orgo, since I heard it was killer. I may do 2ee3 and ao3 next year. Has anyone taken the plant course? Is it actually pretty interesting?

Originally Posted by Angoose

Yeah...I'm kind of feeling I took the "lazy way out" by doing honours bio, 'cause a lot of my friends are in biochem/molec and it seems that what I chose is not as hardcore. I took psych 1b03 because I heard Dr. Day was an amazing lecturer, and that the follow-up course, Positive Psychology, was great. Can anyone attest to that?

I love Dr. Day and I actually love his courses BECAUSE of his exam style, they're a nice break from science courses. Everything is mc and for most of his courses (if not all, I haven't taken some of them), he has a question bank from which he draws test questions that he posts online. Meaning that if you do 100+ of those questions, you're pretty much guaranteed at least an 11. It's super easy to get a 12 in his courses because of this, and he doesn't even change up the questions, they are literally carbon copies of the ones in the question bank. He does like to test on completely useless facts though (eg. for abnormal psych, we had to know the prevalence of some diseases in the 1960s vs. now). He's also a good lecturer and knows the material well.