music major concerns

don't be afraid of taking classes.

people who advise you not to take more than 4 courses first semester are people who are afraid of working, probably students who have never had a high university workload, and are just a bunch of bull anyways. university is a big adjustment, and classes are part of it.

take this coming from a guy who had 7 courses consistently through university. engineering courses. take as many classes as you want and feel you can safely take. experiment. have fun. i can't stand arts or social science students who had 15 or 20 hours of class a week who complain that their course load is too high. it may not be the easiest, but a 33 hour/week classs and lab schedule in university with hard engineering courses didn't kill me and wasn't unfairly taxing.

if you're allowed to and need the courses anyway, sign up. if it seems too stressful, then drop a course off the bat and take it later. it's not a big deal. sign up for non music courses too, and if you can handle them and get something out of em, then you will be better because of it, even if it is more work than most people would advise.

just keep your head on, don't get overwhealmed, and experiment. if it seems too hard, then lighten up the load. if you think you can take on more, which you probably can (if you don't listen to too many music majors telling you not to do so your first couple of days), then try it out. the worst that can happen - well, it's probably not too bad at all, so just go for it.

I think I took summer classes and mini sessions almost every year.

A word of advise, if you stink at a certain subject like Math or English, take it at a community college and transfer the credit in to the university. Often times, the credit will transfer but the grade won't. You just have to make a C. So, if you take a bad subject and skate by with a C, you get credit for the class but it doesn't have a detrimental effect on your university GPA. Plus, it's cheaper at a community/junior college.

You just have to make sure the course at the JC will transfer. The university should have a chart of what courses at which JC's are the equivalent of their courses. The public speaking course I took at JC had a different type of number and name. Most of the time, American History I will be named similarly at both schools but in this case I had to take Business and Professional Speech to get the equivalent of basic Public Speaking. The basic Public Speaking course at the JC wouldn't have transfered. So you have to be careful of that. Again, your university should have something like this:

http://www1.txstate.edu/catsweb/am/e000000_wb0.htm

Mini sessions are great. You knock out a class in 3 weeks. I'd much rather be done with History quickly than spreading it out over an entire semester.

Taking core classes in summer and mini sessions really frees you up during the semester. I'd much rather spend my out of class time in the practice room than studying political science or writing essays for an English class.

The only core classes I took at my university were my Sciences (Physics), Anthroplogy, American Literature, and a PhysEd. Everything else like Algebra, History, English, and Political Science were taken at a JC.