My two characters are in college. They tend to think more in images and abstract concepts than in words. They also have much better long-term memory than short-term memory. They're also somewhat introverted and tend to prefer small close-knit groups or even being alone. I haven't decided what my characters would study yet, though. Based on the personality traits above, what do you think would be fitting college courses for these two, and what kind of job would they be wanting to get? Also, the story follows them throughout their whole time in college, so in what order should they take those courses and how long would each course take?
Well, might be different where you are, but where I was at first years generally took all intro classes and officially decided their majors after that. So if you start at the beginning they'd be taking a bit of everything.
I live in South Florida. Also, I think I asked for specific courses they could take and what degrees they could major in based on the personality traits I described in the original post.
Well, I'm going to say one should be majoring in Business and the other in Molecular Biology. If you have a school in mind they should be attending, find it's website, or one similar, and you should be able to pull up the curriculum for each program and the courses and credits needed to graduate.
There are countless possible options. What's the story about? What kind of studies would further the plot, or amuse the reader, or otherwise work well for the overall story?
I thought of art when I read this. Literature/writing would probably be a good choice too. But yes, as someone said above, they would be taking general education courses their first two years. This is so if they change their mind on their major, they have two years to do so.
Maybe they're taking it because they think it's a more marketable degree. Maybe whoever is paying their tuition want them to get a business degree. Maybe they don't understand how business is any more people-focused than any other career path. Or maybe they just really like business because complex people , even if they're introverted, have interests more varied than 2-dimensional character definitions generally allow.
Really, they could even be going for a career that's not entirely suited to them but is something they want to do. Or maybe they don't know and they can take the gen-ed courses while trying to figure it out. What classes would your characters want to take?
If there is a college around you, I would look at that. Its totally up to the person. I know some people who tool all the required classes for their major FIRST, and then did the electives. With me, I switched majors so I had to play catch up and took more than the allotted classes in my major for the semesters until i caught up. Also, you build your own schedule. At my university, you pick your classes and build your schedule, then take it to your program adviser to approve. They make suggestions ("take an elective" or "I think you should be taking more class in X" etc.) Really, there is no right or wrong answer
I can't speak for all colleges, but at my college, you take about 15 credit hours per semester. (You can do more or less credit hours, by the way). 15 credit hours is about 5 classes, give or take. Some classes are only worth one credit while others may be worth four. Most classes seem to be worth three credits.
What difference does it make? I can't recall too many stories where it went into that much detail about courses unless it was central to the plot. Young Indiana Jones took Archaeology, we know that. But why would we care what math classes he took and when?
Maybe we could offer better help if you could explain why you need to know? You seem to be needing a lot of very precise and very accurate detail, but usually such details serve some story need. What’s the story need?
Oh you get all kinds in college. Especially in those basic courses you need for pretty much any degree. Mostly college kids are 'kids'- fresh out of high school to twenties age range, but I've met parents and even grandparents that were going back to college to get their degree- heck my mom is too! My dad took some (online) classes to get better at math for his accounting job. Really, for this sort of thing, you can pretty much decide, as ChickenFreak was saying, what kinds you want them to interact with and you'll be able to come up with an excuse.
Chances are those characters would be people. All different kinds of people that would be in those classes for all kinds of reasons. It would likely be easier for you to create people you want these characters to interact with and make up a reason as to why they're there. Also, at the smallest school I went to, I probably interacted with close to 5000 people in the four years I was there, so even without explanation it would be completely reasonable for your characters to interact with practically any type of person. But FYI, not everyone at college is going to be college aged. There's always a small contingent of students in their 30's and 40's, and usually one or two students that aren't even legal age yet. there are also, at least at the schools I went, lots of foreign students. For a University in Nova Scotia, probably a third of the students were from either China or somewhere in the Former French Colonial Africa.
What's your story? Do you know it? So far this sounds like a story about some college kids and their day to day life, down to the classes they take and the people in the classes. Sorry, but who wants to read this? Are you going to get in to details about the teachers too and their homework assignments?
@RadioheadMTVBeachHouse93 , are you just looking for largely random choices for inspiration, like a writing prompt?
Hmmm. You intereacted with them or were you just in a classroom with them? Just sitting in a class with people is not interacting.
Talking, doing group work, trading notes, giving presentations in front of, listening to presentations from, proof reading, critiquing, forming and attending study groups, going to parties with, and occasionally waking up next to.
The population of my city is 879,150, so i guess I have interacted with 879,000 people because I live in the same city and drive the same roads as they do. I once told a jerk to get off my car. He count? No wonder these mellenials think that if they have 1000 likes on Facebook then that means they have 1000 friends.
Well, interacting with someone is basically the definition of interacting with someone, so probably. Even cutting the people that I only small talked with on one or two occassions, then that figure goes down to probably around 2500. People I spent more than 10 minutes socializing with on more than one occasion, probably about 1000 - 1500. People I enjoyed seeing, could easily converse with, and knew some personal details about, around 100. People I frequently held sustained conversations with, ~20. Close intimate friends, like 5. What's your cutoff for interacting?
