Dealing with college

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How do I deal with narrow fields of interests in college? Like, I'm really into the evolution of birds and cetaceans, and I can probably give lectures about it myself. But if I want a college degree around that special interest, I have to study tons of other subjects that I'm not interested at all. Case in point: a couple of months ago I enrolled in an undergraduate biology degree program, because once you're past the basic stuff (introductory biology, chemistry, physics, stuff like that), there's quite a few courses I can choose about birds and cetaceans. But the thing is, I have to study so much stuff that I'm not really interested in that I'm already thinking about giving up. It seems like all undergraduate degrees want to give you a "well-rounded" education, but how does one reconcile that with the special and intense interests that characterize a person on the autism spectrum? Why can't there be a degree just in the specific subject I'm interested in?

Realistically, there's no way around studying general subjects before more specific ones. In order to really understand a bird you have to have some knowledge about other animals in the same ecosystem, particularly the ones that a species of birds eats as food, or which eats that species. In order to quantify what you know about whales, you will need to have statistics and other maths. Before a specialist will teach you their specialty, you will have to demonstrate that you have enough writing skill to describe what you study.

But there are ways to speed up and/or customize those lower division courses. I for one, crashed and burned my first year at a large university (when I was in freshman classes of 150 people) but did alright at a smaller college where not only did I not have to deal with the noise of huge classes, but I could do more projects in each class that I tailored to my particular interests, as opposed to fill-in-the blank type testing. Then I transferred to a major university (larger than the first one) where I could take the smaller upper-division courses in the subjects that really fascinated me.

I would also recommend taking as many AP tests as you can to place out of more of those general skills classes.

I'm assuming from what you describe (please correct me if I'm wrong) that you're from the United States. Many other countries assume that the "well-rounded" and "general" education occurs before college, and thus degree programs are more specialized from the start.

As I know all too well - if you want the papoer you have to work the program and do the "breadth" thing.

If you do not NEED the paper, some places let you take courses off credit as special student or whateverf, for a bit of a fee break since you are NOT buying the paper. But there are usually limitations.

If you do the thing, avoid the pitfall I fell into - do not let tour final yeatr be ALL useless and grating breadth stuff. Spread it out and save some good courses for the end.

The only way I am able to deal with this type of thing is to find some way to connect these uninteresting things to my interests. So in your case, you could perhaps view these peripheral courses in biology as background information. They don't directly connect to your primary interest, but they may have some secondary or tertiary relevance. Start the courses with the question "How can I relate this to my core interest?", rather than "Why the heck am I doing this boring stuff?".

I found the general studies courses to be less stressful than the focus area courses. In those large general studies lecture halls, you're just a number and you're working for yourself. I had trouble with many of my more focused area of study courses where I was often paired up or working in small groups. I enjoyed working with the other students and loved sharing the great group grades, but felt like I spent a lot of time explaining my rationale and ideas to them. I have two BS degrees... one in elementary education and one in nursing. Maybe other majors don't have as many group projects.

Thanks everyone for the replies.