Ancient Reddit thread scrolls whisper the lies of students past: “Math 133 is nothing, easiest class I’ve ever taken,” “Yo, you don’t even have to show up for ‘CATH 325: Mystery and the Imagination.’” You heed their advice, only to be later victimized by the thought that you could pass the class by daydreaming.
We’ve all heard of the elusive ‘bird course,’ an elective that boosts your GPA with minimal effort. However, some McGillians seem to have conflicting responses to these bird courses. Are these courses consistent in their low rigour, or are they professor-dependent? Are they student-dependent? All of these nuances contribute to whether or not a given course is truly an ‘easy A’ or a perpetuated myth.
The Tribune interviewed students in the midst of add/drop season to gauge the reality of the bird course.
Nicole No, U4 Management, believes that they do in fact exist, having taken them herself.
“There’s definitely some courses that are easier and that require less work than others. And I’ll be honest, […] I think I did most of all of them [….] It really does help in the sense that I can actually focus on the harder courses […] it gives me more time.”
Marijke Oosterhuis, U4 Arts, believes bird courses depend on a student’s degree requirements.
“I’ve found that bird courses are more so ones that are required for your major, and the professor doesn’t really care too much [….] They just give you an automatic A.”
Whereas Harantxa Jean, U3 Arts, finds them to be student-specific,
“In general, when people want to have easy A’s, they are going towards classes that they have prior knowledge in because it’s going to be easier,” she explained. “But I don’t necessarily think classes in general are easy.”
Evidently, the defining characteristics of a bird course are quite fluid. What defines a class as ‘easy’ is not a dependable metric of whether or not these courses actually exist. However, No’s experience with bird courses is proof that they have, in some cases at least, lived up to their expectations as a crutch for students to boost their GPA.
In this perpetual search for the ‘easy A,’ is it possible that students have subordinated the pursuit of genuine curiosity when selecting their electives?
Chloe Styres, U0 Science, finds that this is a common practice among McGill students.
“I hear some people [saying], ‘I need an easy course for this upcoming semester.’ And they’ll just take anything. They don’t even necessarily have to be interested in it, which I think is kind of sad,” Styles said. “I think that one of the advantages of having electives, especially with the Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory grading systems, [is that] you can take anything that you’re genuinely interested in learning.”
Oosterhuis speaks to the slight absurdity of students choosing courses that don’t interest them in hopes of attaining high marks.
“I find [it] so crazy because you’re paying so much money […] just to, what? Take an easy A class? Don’t you want to learn anything?”
Elaborating on the possible cause of this student tendency, Jean explained her own hypothesis for why the ‘bird course’ has gained so much popularity.
“Especially with AI now, people are more lazy [….] They just want easy A’s so that they can have good grades and just move up in their lives.”
Both the financial investment in a university education and the stresses of academic achievement can overshadow learning for its own sake. Ultimately, the pursuit of the ‘easy A’ demonstrates the woes of successfully navigating the rough terrain of McGill’s academic environment. In the high-pressure atmosphere of an elite institution, it is difficult to ask students to jeopardize high grades for something as amorphous and intangible as ‘passion.’ However, passion is something we can learn to live for, no matter the initial difficulty in prioritizing it.
