Like many things, dual credit classes have good and bad sides. The problem is, the good is really good and the bad can be really bad.

Dual credit classes give you credit for high school and for college. Through Collin College, students are taught their senior level courses that they will also need for their freshman year of college.

For the most part, professors from Collin come to the lecture hall. However, some students are lazy and sign up late and have to drive to one of the Collin campuses, but even if that happens, it’s not that bad.

Dual credit classes are either during first and second period or during seventh and eighth. I chose to have all of my dual credit classes in the morning. I do three (the most that you are able to do), all in the morning.

On Monday I have statistics from 8:45 a.m. to 9:35 a.m. and English 1302 from 9:40 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. On Tuesday and Thursday, I have government from 9:15 a.m. to 10:35 a.m. Last semester, I had college algebra instead of stat, English 1301 instead of 1302 and economics instead of government.

Overall, I like dual credit; mainly because I get to sleep in a little later on Tuesday and Thursday and the fact that I’m taking three at the same time gives me an off period in the afternoon. But more importantly than sleeping in, I will be going to Texas Tech University with 27 credit hours. Some of which are from AP classes but the majority are from dual credit.

30 hours would make me a sophomore, so I’m going to college way ahead of the game.

But I know that some schools don’t take all dual credit hours, for example the University of Oklahoma will not accept dual credit math hours. So it really just depends on where you’re going to school.

The material in dual credit isn’t all that hard to comprehend. College algebra was definitely the hardest but I was still able to get a 90 in the class. The real struggle with dual credit is the professors.

I have had two fantastic professors, one in econ and one in government, one average professor (college algebra) and two that I’m really not fond of (stat and english).

I absolutely loved my econ teacher. We called her Viv and she was so interesting to listen to and she let us voice our opinions. We didn’t have an overload of homework or classwork. Everythings we did was manageable; we just had to make sure we kept up with our online homework. Hint: putting it off to the last minute because it’s all due at the end of the semester is not a wise idea!

Online homework is a big aspect of dual credit so if you know you won’t get on the computer each night I would highly advise that you reconsider dual credit. Especially the math classes.

All the homework I have ever had in my two math classes has been online. While it’s not hard, it’s easy to forget when things are due because the teachers never talk about it. It’s up to you to log on and see what you have to do.

Being independent is a big part of dual credit. If you can’t rely on yourself to figure things out you will struggle.

You will also struggle if you have difficulty dealing with people who are different than you (i.e., my English teacher).

My English teacher always thinks she right about everything; ridiculous things sometimes. For example, one time she showed us a poster online as an example for something we were going to do in class. It was clearly a computer generated image, (click here to see it) and she tried to tell us that someone took the picture. She honestly tried to say that someone went to a dump, arranged trash to look like a hamburger, and took a picture of it. Then we proved her wrong and she refused to listen to us.

But this is also how it will be in college. You will have all kinds of professors and you will have to deal with all different kinds of people so it opens your eyes up to a new type of teacher; they aren’t all like the great ones we have here.

Overall, I would highly recommend dual credit. I’ve learned a lot about how to balance a schedule and work with people I don’t like. It’s a good experience and it definitely will help prepare you for how things will work in college.  But don’t take it as a blow off. And be ready for certain weeks where you have 5 essays due. It can be rough, but it’s worth it.