What the hell is an APS?

APS stands for academic planning session and I just had mine ten days ago or so.

When I first heard the term, "Academic Planning Session," I had no idea what it actually meant. I knew I'd be planning something academically in the session, but that's about as helpful as telling a blind person to point to the blue object.

The Academic Planning Session is essentially a big introduction to GS' core. The Core is a curriculum Columbia designed in order to ensure that each student, regardless of major, graduates a well-rounded individual. For example, did you know that Columbia requires students to work their way up to the intermediate language of their choosing? Essentially, every single Columbia student should be able to have a basic conversation in a language other than English! I, personally, am ecstatic that this is a requirement as I have always believed that everyone should aim to be bilingual. Because I am already a native Spanish speaker, I only have to take one course to fulfill the requirement. Schweet!

The rest of the core for General Studies is as follows:

• Writing
• Literature/Humanities (2; 1 must be taken at Columbia)
• Foreign Language (Up to the Intermediate II level)
• Art Humanities
• Music Humanities
• Global Core (2)
• Contemporary Civilization/Social Science (2)
• Quantitative Reasoning
• Science (3)

The number in parenthesis is how many courses must be taken. Each course needs to be at least 3 points (credits).

There are tons of other limitations on Core classes, but I would need to write a handbook to explain them all...which is probably why we got a handbook at the APS.

My APS in particular was run by Dean K, a very funny Greek woman who is a student advisor as well as head of the study abroad programs. There were about thirty students in my APS session and it lasted about an hour and a half.

After the APS, there was a meet and greet session between the current students and the new students (myself and the other APS attendees). I met some really wonderful people and got my many questions answered by people who knew best. I also met the Dean of the school who, surprisingly, reminded me of Dean Pelton from Community minus the fabulous heels.

More on the APS later.