Classes: one of the hardest things to choose. Whether you’re searching for bird courses to fill your electives with something relatively easy, something that sparks your interest or just something available, this article should provide it all. Remember when course selection season comes up, try to get into all the classes you can as soon as you can so they don’t fill up too quickly! All of these courses are courses that I’ve personally taken. These descriptions are based on my experience when I took them and the content or courses themselves may not be available or the same as when I experienced them.
RE104: Evil and its Symbols
This first-year course is an easy bird course to fill your busy schedule with (depending on the professor you get). My personal experience taking this course was during Covid, so the exam was a take-home exam. I’m not sure if this is still the case, but it was worth around 25%. If you can write essays/papers this course is a good idea. There were three papers, the exam and class participation that took up all of the markings for this course. If you’re a better test taker, you might want to move along on the list.
EN285: Tween Literature
If English interests you in any way or did as a kid, this course is a good one to take. With a selection of books like Wonder and Nancy Drew, you dive into the way that children interpret books like these and get to read old childhood faves in the meantime. If you have Professor Springett you are extra lucky for this course!
GG294: Geography of Tourism
This one fills up quickly, so if you’ve read this far in the list and are currently choosing courses, run. This class is more test based than the other two listed above, with an in-person multiple choice midterm and final and class participation being a heavy weight on the grading scale. However, if you write down all the lecture material in classes, you should be good to go. There are a few online quizzes with ten questions each that are easy if you attend lectures as well. This one is a bird course and everyone knows it, get it in your schedule!
UU150: Community, Engagement and Service
A preface to this one, sometimes depending on your program I’ve heard it may not count towards your overall credit so be careful when you choose this course. Maybe talk to an academic advisor about it or something, I don’t claim to be a professional. This class is (at least when I took it) an asynchronous test-based course that basically talks about the community and how you should take part in it. I remember doing two community engagement assignments and then getting a certificate of some kind (sorry this was in the first year so I kind of forget) but that process was easy. Overall, I got an A in this class with very minimal homework. Bird. Course. This one also fills up quickly people.
AF105: Skills for University Success
This one is so underrated. I haven’t heard anyone else talk about this course, but it was the easiest course I have taken in my whole two years of school. You basically have no choice but to participate and if you do, you get an A. Easy as that. This class is nothing but a GPA booster. There was no final when I took this course, although this may have changed now but participation was a big part of the grade and writing what the topic of the class was and a brief description of how that applies to your life was something you had to hand in every class.
EN272: Intro to Creative Writing
This is another English-related course. However, you don’t have to be an English major to like it. The classes consisted of prompts that got you free writing in a notebook. The professor I had insisted that we handwrite all of the notes and answers to the prompts (depending on the professor), but I still found it interesting. The assignments are more personalized and relatively short. During the class, you also may have some writers come in and guest lecture about their work and you get to ask them questions if this also interests you.
PP110: Values and Society
If Philosophy interests you at all, this is a perfect starter course for the basics. My personal experience with this course was that it is not necessarily a bird course, but I did take it accelerated so my experience may be different than someone that had a whole semester of it. However, if you take it in the accelerated version, it is interesting and not super hard but a little reading is definitely required to do well in this class.
ES110: Enviro, Sustain and Society Environmental Studies
Learning about the environment and how it functions can be cool. This course is considered by some to be a bird course. I would be one of those people. However, it is a fair bit of test-based work, along with a combination of writing pieces. Some of the work is straightforward and some of it takes a bit more of the readings to really understand. However, if you go to lectures regularly, you should find it a good bird course for your studies.
I don’t claim to be a professional and all of these examples are based on personal experience in these courses. If you’re looking for some quick and easy options for courses this coming school year, I truly hope this helps you out. For the people that want to gatekeep these bird courses, I’m sorry for outing the easy ones but it had to be done. Everyone just wants to get through university as easily as they can. I hope this article gives you enough options for your selection and good luck!