Thursday, November 1, 2012

Discovery of Human Sexuality Studies

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This would be my fourth year attending San Francisco State University; and so far, most classes have been for my major but also some of them are for my personal interest. A lot of times, I feel that there is not a point to taking certain classes, especially if you are not personally interested in it.  Since most colleges are overly impacted and are cutting the classes students need, it leads to students to taking classes that are not necessary and delay the time they graduate. Just like everything in life, there are always pros and cons to taking classes that do not pertain to your major. If you look at it through an optimist's perspective, it gives students more knowledge about certain subjects they were not initially aware of before. When students have more knowledge about things that interest them, it gives them a chance to explore the world based on what they learned in class and apply it to the real world that potentially can lead to more opportunities to their career. 

Having to deal with impacted classes at SF State, I had no idea what classes to take. Just like a majority of students, we all just want to get out school as soon as we can; so we can either try to start new careers or continue to go to school. As I was trying to search for classes to take during my second fall semester, I thought to myself, what classes can I take that will benefit me to pursue my career goal but was also had interest in? Searching for hours and hours for classes online, I finally encountered a class that sounded interesting to me. The class that I found was a human sexualities class called “Sex and Relationships”. At first, I assumed that the title of the class was the main ideas talked about in class. It turns out it was not just about the “sex” or exclusively on “relationships” but how to maintain relationships and why some people’s relationships fail or succeed based on certain statistics studied. Towards the end of the semester, I really enjoyed the class, and wanted to see if there were similar classes.

Spring semester comes along and I find out that the sex and relationship class counted towards one of my general education requirements, so I decided to see what other human sexualities courses I could take. When it was time for me to register for classes, I luckily found two more human sexuality classes that will help me finish a huge part of my general education requirements. The two classes I took were called “Variations of Human Sexualities” and “Human Sexualities”. Both classes, we learn the evolutionary perspectives of certain behaviors and also the social perspectives of sexual orientation, gender identity, and how all those aspects play a role in different cultures (or societies depending on what part of the world you are looking at). After I was done with the semester, I was disappointed that I was not taking more human sexualities classes. I think the main reason why I was so intrigued with these courses was because of the how the professors taught the course. The human sexualities studies program has professors who are very passionate and know how to explain certain concepts very well, so that students are able to understand the material.

I believe that the reasons classes are interesting because of who teaches the course. If a student takes a course that interesting because of the topic but finds out that the professor is not great, then that will make the student less motivated to go to class. I personally had a few of those kinds of classes for my general education requirements, such as  history and critical thinking.The professors that teach these course made me not interested in taking these kinds of courses again. The professors were monotonic, boring, and fell asleep in almost every lecture. It sucked because I chose the class because the topic seemed interesting, but if you have professors who are not as motivated as you to teach the material to you, then it is wasting your time and energy to even strive to get a good grade in the class.


People always say things happen for a reason, whether it is good or bad. A lot of the courses that I have taken were a lot of eye openers for me to seek out new opportunities that I would have never thought of; however, for some courses, it made me realize to never take those kinds of classes again because I realized those topics did not really interest me. For all the human sexuality classes I have taken in the last few years had made me realize I want to continue studying it and that is the main reason why I decided to minor in human sexuality studies.In the end, I found something that will help benefit my career goals by not only looking at just physiological perspective, but now I have another study that can focus on how people develop their idenitiy. 

2 comments:

  1. I have only been at SFSU for 1 year, but prior to SFSU I was at City College of San Francisco and I remember taking so many classes there that have nothing to do with my career. Also here at SFSU I have taken classes that do not pertain to my major, but I am forced to take to meet requirements for general ed courses. For example I took a Sex and Relationship course and that class has nothing to do with Optometry. However, like you said these "unnecessary" courses will give us more knowledge about other aspects of life, so even though they have nothing to do with our future careers, they give us more knowledge about other things in life.

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  2. It is interesting how you brought up the topic about how a class would be interesting and useful if the teacher actually know how to teach the material. I think this is very true, I remember how I felt so annoyed that I had to take calculus in order to be able to transfer to SFSU. At that time, I was expecting the class to be super hard and boring, yet because my teacher was super knowledgeable and actually know how to teach the materials the class become enjoyable and interesting (even though I really dislike Mathematics). So I feel that it is necessary to find out about the teacher way of teaching before taking his or her class.

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