Evan, my most important senior project is due in two weeks, and I haven’t even had time to start it because of all the busy work I keep getting assigned from my electives. How am I supposed to get all my research done when I’m bogged down regurgitating textbook chapters for daily assignments?

You are faced with the inevitable senior dilemma. You’ve gotten most of your required classes done, so you enrolled in some lower-level easy stuff that you didn’t think was going to get in the way of your big, serious, senior courses.

You need a good grade in those classes, so if you’re a straight A student most of the time, this may be a really stressful semester for you. If you don’t mind pulling a C now and again, then you might breathe a little easier.

Lord knows you don’t want to do badly in the random other classes you signed up for. Even though you only signed up for them to get your total credits up to 120, they are classes, you are paying for them and you should always do your best.

However, don’t let these get in the way of tackling your foremost responsibilities. That project and the class that it’s for are way more important than the daily reading and discussion in your lower-level electives. If you need to blow off some daily assignments or reading in one of those classes to get your research done, do it.

If you need to get a D in Human Growth and Development so you can pass your capstone course, that’s a logical sacrifice. Your performance in that course is going to be a lot more important to the people you want to hire you than your performance in the other classes you picked up.

If you’ve got some really hard projects that require some serious attention, it’s not like professors are going to be offended if you skip class to get them done. You’re taking their class for the credit hours, not to define your academic rigor.

You need to pass your capstone course to graduate, and you need to do well on your final project so you can use it as evidence of your knowledge and experience when you’re looking for a job. If you have to take a hit in elective courses to get the cap and gown on, take it.

ealinko@mavs.coloradomesa.edu