In most college curricula, you'll need two semesters of science and the corresponding lab courses to satisfy the science requirement. Unless you decide to pursue a science major, that means you'll need to pick an introductory course from the choices your school offers. So how does one go about doing this?

The easiest way to choose is having an interest in one of the choices. For example, I took Biology, Chemistry, and Physics in high school and got decent grades. When I got into college, I picked Physics because it seemed most interesting. College work is much more rigorous than high school, though, and I barely passed both semesters.

If you have no real interest one way or another and you aren't planning to be a scientist, the next best approach is to examine your strengths and weaknesses in other areas. Are you a math genius? Biology, Astronomy, and Geology don't require much math; Physics can be pretty math-intensive, with Chemistry somewhere in the middle. Like animals or gardening? Biology is filled with living things, but you may want to ask if you're squeamish about dissections.

(My friend was going to take Biology until she found out they were dissecting a cat. She switched to Geology, where dissections are done with a hammer.)

Whatever you pick, it's best to stick with a single subject for both semesters. It's kind of like a freezing cold pool -- once you're in up to your waist, you might as well dunk your head.

Hopefully this helps you make your course selection a bit more scientifically.

Some people just intuitively 'get' accounting and finance, while the rest of us have to struggle along with it. (Or, in the case of my roommate, struggle against it.) It took a few semesters, but it finally dawned on me what the key is to putting accounting and finance in their place.

The main difference between accounting and finance is a matter of perspective. Finance looks ahead, while accounting tells us where we have been. (Of course, then there's managerial accounting which looks forward -- I never could tell it apart from finance.) Since I never could steer a car by watching the rearview mirror, I took all the finance and managerial accounting that my business school had and only the financial accounting that they absolutely required.

Perspective also filters down to many of the individual concepts with accounting and finance. Consider, for example, the concept of time value of money. Say you have a loan with a principal amount, interest rate, and number of maturity periods. If you're standing where (when) it's issued, then compound interest tells you what the value will be at maturity. If on the other hand you're sitting at the maturity date, then present value tells you what the original face value of the instrument was when it was issued. (For those of you conversant in algebra, this reflects an inverse relationship between the two.)

You can review the concepts in the study Cramlets(TM) and practice endlessly going backwards and forwards using the bottomless worksheets.

By the way, this insight can also help those of you considering accounting and finance as a major. Are you most comfortable looking forward and figuring out your next moves, or have visions of leading your own company some day? If so, finance shares your forward-thinking approach. If you're more of a 'where have we been' sort of person, on the other hand, maybe accounting will prove more to your liking. (Choosing a major is never easy, either way... but that's a topic for another day.)