By Ryan Manseau
During the majority of his tenure at Cal Poly, business senior Trenten Tso had spent a lot of his time learning the intricacies of how to calculate foreign exchange rates and corporate auditing procedures as a finance concentration.
It wasn’t until he entered his beginner guitar class that he began tackling more humbling skills, like learning how to quickly switch his left hand from a G chord to a C chord.
There’s an endless number of resources Cal Poly provides their students to gain hands-on experience in fields of study. However, there are many opportunities at the university to explore interests that don’t directly pertain to their academic field. As spring registration approaches, students have opportunities to enroll in highly-unique classes such as pickleball, guitar and bowling.
Departments across campus offer a variety of one-or-two unit classes that allow students to top off their schedule with courses that will teach them about all sorts of unique and less-traditionally academic topics.
“Overall I’d say I’m glad I enrolled. I thought it just looked like a really good opportunity to learn a new instrument,” Tso said.
While Tso has not played guitar before the start of winter quarter, he has always had an affinity for making music since he has a background playing the piano and mixing music electronically on his computer. Tso saw guitar as an ideal opportunity to expand his musical horizons.
“Guitar’s been a little bit tougher than I thought,” Tso said. “Everything from like pressing the strings down to my hand positioning to making sure my hand doesn’t cramp up when I play, those are all things I have to take into account.”
Currently, Tso is learning how to master the positioning of the G chord as he prepares for his midterm, which will require him to strum out the song ‘Riptide’ by Vance Joy in front of his classmates.
Guitar isn’t the only class Tso’s taking this quarter outside of his typical area of study. The senior student also jumped at the opportunity to enroll in pickleball after it was recommended to him by a friend.
“Pickleball is a lot less structured. It kind of feels like P.E. class where the teacher just says ‘go’ and you just start messing around; each day’s a little bit different,” Tso said.
In pickleball class, also known as KINE-134, students gather into teams of two and play in tournament-style matches during the one-hour class period. .
Kinesiology Professor Adam Seal teaches a separate section of pickleball, but also positively attested to the “ready, set, go” nature of the course.
“I think it’s getting away from my desk and being able to move around a little bit, I think that’s the best part,” Seal said, ” I think that’s the best part for people in my class as well.”
Seal spent time studying kinesiology and public health when he earned his postdoctoral degree and admires the impact he believes the class has on student’s performance in the classroom.
“A lot of studies show [physical activity] can really help you cognitively,” Seal said. “Like before a test, it just helps out. It’s really good for students.”
Senior journalism student Kiersten Stevens has fostered a love for horses her entire life, however it wasn’t until she learned about Cal Poly’s ‘Equine Management’ course that she was presented with a unique opportunity to further her interest in horsemanship.
“Obviously not every university has an equestrian center, that’s very unique to Cal Poly and a handful of other universities; as soon as I figured out that ASCI-214 was all about horseback riding, I was like ‘I have to take this class,” Stevens said.
Despite her vast interest in horses, Stevens only had the opportunity to take a few basic, brief and expensive horse riding classes before she got the opportunity to work on her horsemanship skills at Cal Poly.
ASCI-214 gave Stevens the opportunity to develop a relationship with the same horse each week. Stevens groomed him, learned about his instincts on the trail and how to control how he responded to different situations.
“The classes I’d taken were super standard, you were almost always riding a horse you’d just been introduced to around a simple loop-shaped trail,” Stevens said.
Students are required to pay a $500 fee for their participation in ASCI-214. However, Stevens said she considered the return on investment to be absolutely worthwhile because of the level of depth the course allowed her to explore the topics of horsemanship in.
“With other courses, you’ll pay $100 a week to spend an hour or two at most with a horse each week,” Stevens said. “With this course, you really get to spend more time and bond with your horse more than you would in an average lesson.”
Video by: Emily Brower
Business administration senior Chris Cornell said he finds a similar escape from his day-to-day routine in class when he attends his bowling class, KINE-109.
“You don’t even get to bowl on the first day. It’s very explanatory; they told us about the proper techniques and also the rules about going up to the actual bowling area as well as handling the center console that holds the bowling balls,” Cornell said.
As he learns about the intricacies of bowling, Cornell said he values the opportunity to take a class that doesn’t stress him out very much. Will the class have a lasting impact on his bowling skills?
“Yes, honestly, yes,” Cornell said. “Because I don’t know when else I’d consistently be going bowling this much, like any other time in my life ever,” Cornell said.
See the department-by-department list we created below of one to two unit courses offered at Cal Poly.
