Useful Liberal Education College Intro Courses for Business
Liberal education requirements: the downfall of every anxious student looking to dive into their prospective major. The thought of retaking your boring, mundane high school courses in college to satisfy lib ed requirements is usually nauseating, but you should try to make the best of it. During my freshman year, I’ve had some terrible, decent, and good 1001 intro classes (mostly just “decent”), and some of them are actually fairly useful in business or life.
When choosing your classes, I highly recommend going for those that are interesting as opposed to those that are easy whenever possible. But here is my little run down of useful college introductory courses I’ve taken, or already have scheduled to take.
Psychology 1001 - I like to call it “the class defining common sense and obvious human nature.” Really, there’s very little in this class that you haven’t observed sometime in your life. So the fact that it should be studied is pointless, right??? No! Psychology is one of those classes that I actually find myself applying in every day life and in my business/hopeful future business ventures.
Psychology has made me aware of many antics of human behavior, and it is interesting. Conditioning, heuristics, overconfidence, and perception is huge in life, and it can definitely be a useful liberal education class for anyone.
Foreign Language - The world is becoming smaller, and taking a foreign language is an easy way to fill some humanities requirements. It probably isn’t the slack class that you’re hoping for, but it’s probably the most practical liberal education class offered at universities. Understanding a foreign language and their culture is a huge plus. If you’re worried about ruining your GPA, maybe try an easier language. Generally, the romantics (Spanish, Italian, French) are easier than the Korean/Chinese/Japanese types. I hear German isn’t too terrible either.
International History - To fulfill your history course, try taking one with a world perspective. The same theme here as above: the world is flat. The US may not be the center of the world for the next 100 years. Understanding foreign cultures is a good eye opener, and the knowledge acquired from them may help you more marketable in future business ventures. Personally, I got a Latin American history class all lined up for next semester.
Rhetoric courses - Overloading on your rhetoric type liberal education courses will definitely help develop yourself in the long run. Being able to create a comprehensible, persuasive, and logical argument is very important in selling and putting together deals. With some good rhetoric, you’re credible and demand the respect of your peers which can only be a good thing. Nice guys finish last. So be sure to try your hand at writing, philosophy, and public speech courses.
Having given you this rundown, these are the main types of courses that you may want to look into for developing yourself as a better business person in college. I also strongly encourage you to take courses that will be fun (A classical Near Eastern studies class for myself), since you might as well try to enjoy fulfilling your numerous, possibly pointless, lib ed classes.
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