US College Life

mselephant2015

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In particular UCLA but I'll take any US college experience.

So I'm from the UK but my story is based in the States, in particular UCLA. The MCs are all third years (juniors?) on their undergraduate programmes and what I'd like to know is what's the average week like? Class-wise. Do you have one class one day, perhaps two the next, then none? Or one a day? Or a class and some independent study? If I sound clueless, it's because I am. I've never ever been to a UK university. But that's not going to stop me, so :D I have studied the UCLA website and saved copies of the 2015-2016 year schedules for some of them but even they baffle me a little. Any help or information would be greatly appreciated.
 

Maggie Maxwell

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Your schedule as a college student is whatever you make it. You choose your classes at the beginning of the semester (fall semester or spring semester) based on the requirements for your major offered at that semester. By junior year, most of your classes will be upper level major or minor courses with very few "fun" courses, especially if you have to retake a class. Pick your student's major, and then see what classes are required for it. Then, pick three or four of them from the curriculum, since most classloads are 3 to 4 a semester. Most likely you'll end up with 3/1 or 2/2 on a M/W/F or M/W and Tu/Th schedule.
 

cornflake

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It's entirely individual.

College kids set their own schedules, depending on what classes they're taking and, well, their schedules. For instance, likely a jr. is done with most required core classes, which are usually done in the first couple of years, so they're focusing on major requirements and electives. Hence if they need a class for their major that only has one open section available on, I dunno, Tuesdays and Thursdays from 11-1 (I have no idea about UCLA just guessing based on my own undergrad and grad kinds of schedules), then they'd probably try to fit other classes around that schedule as much as possible, or like, have other classes that are M/W schedule, or whatever. Some people manage to cram everything into a couple/few days, some people like having classes every day.... *shrug*

People usually do 12-15 credits a semester.
 

ap123

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How many hours of class each week can depend on the types of class--if it includes a lab, there will be more classroom hours, theater/music classes may involve hours spent on productions or performances.

Kiddo2 is in college now and usually takes 4 classes a semester, needs permission to take five, but that's in a liberal arts college, at state schools I think it's more typical to take 5 classes.

Junior year is also a year where many students who are going to do a semester (or year) abroad do so. Even if your character isn't, odds are (s)he'll have at least a few friends who do.
 

benbenberi

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College classes typically meet 2 or 3 days a week (MWF or TTh are common). Students sometimes try to schedule all their classes on the same days, but that's not always possible, and other students prefer to have the daily schedule more spread out.

If there are lab or discussion sections, those are in addition to the regular class. Length and frequency is very variable.

Advanced-level seminars in the major may meet weekly. Foreign language classes sometimes require daily drill sessions. Performance classes may have special schedules.

Most classes will expect the student to do a lot of work outside the classroom (reading, research, studying, projects, etc.). The amount of time an individual will actually spend is, of course, highly variable.

The number of classes a full-time student takes at a time depends on a lot of factors (inc but not limited to school calendar, major & general education requirements, class availability, & extra-curricular commitments) but 5 classes/semester is a common load. By the time they're juniors, most their classes are likely to be in their major.

If your story is specifically set at UCLA, I recommend you spend a lot of time on the UCLA website, & follow any available links to student resources & support groups/forums to get an idea what's really going on. There's so much variation between different universities/colleges that it's difficult to generalize in a useful way.
 

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UCLA Quarter System (vastly different from a semester system): https://www.registrar.ucla.edu/Calendars/Annual-Academic-Calendar

You take more quarter-credit hours than one does semester-credit hours. You may take 120 credit hours to earn a bachelor (4-year) degree in a semester system. Depending on the school, you take a considerably higher number of quarter credits.

UCLA has 130 majors to choose from: http://www.admission.ucla.edu/prospect/coll_sch.htm

Economics Major (example).... Download the Quarter-by-Quarter Worksheet. At the bottom, you will see how many quarter credits are required to earn a degree (180 total with a minimum of 60 earned at the schoo, compared to transfer credit from another school):

https://economics.ucla.edu/undergraduate/current-students/majors-and-minors/

Academic start and end times differ quite a bit, between semester and quarter systems. I went to a quarter school for a year, and here were some issues I faced transferring to a semester school....

1. Precalc was split into two quarters. The first covered algebraic functions only. The second covered trigonometric functions only. My degree only required the algebraic quarter. I needed the other class to complete standard calculus class.

2. Classes started after Labor Day (Sept instead of August in semester programs, usually) and ended in late June (compared to May for semester schools).

Minimum, full-time students are classified as 12 quarter credits (per quarter).... https://dnn.uclanet.ucla.edu/fas102016

These might be 12 week classes (instead of 15 week classes), depending on the school. Typically, students take more. 15 is a nice, typical load. Some do 18. If you are very strong with your organizational skills, time management, don't work, and so forth, 21-24 is possible. Not recommended.

I had a semester (semester program) where I took 32 credits. I got my 4.0 GPA, but I was a zombie. I was a credit overload person and had a lot of experience prior to this opportunity.

Last note.... Some schools call them credits and some units. If your story takes place at a particular school, check which they use.
 

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Back when I was an undergrad at a full-time college, I tried to set my schedule as having Friday off or with just one class. Didn't always work out. I also tried to stack them in the mornings so I could work afternoons/evenings. Also didn't always work out. Had a few times I ended up with a morning class, three hours off and an afternoon class. I didn't live on campus and it wasn't unusual for me to miss the afternoon course.

Most weeks was two or three days of a class, an hour a day for three days or 90 minutes a day for two days a week. A few classes were three hours once a week. Lab classes often had a 90 minute lecture and a 90 minute lab. Something like English or Math had three hour-long classes a week.

When I went. I was always drinking age, 18 was the age until I was in my mid-twenties. Students that were of drinking age, and many that weren't, made sure they got out early on Fridays. I participated in a few clubs so I tried to get out early every day, or I worked part time. Did an internship my third year where I had to put 24 hours a week in at work but it was a newspaper so we generally worked 2 pm to 10 pm two or three days a week and I usually did an 8-hour day on Saturday covering high-school sports.

What do you need for your story? Just make it fit.

Jeff
 
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lonestarlibrarian

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My universities all used the semester system (Fall, Spring, with the option of a May Mini-mester, a Summer I, and a Summer II.) A full-time undergrad usually took between 12 and 18 semester hours. You needed to get special permission to take more than 21 hours. A language class or a science with a lab is going to be 4 hours; PE is 1 hour; most other classes are 3 hours. You take general classes towards your degree, and basic classes in your major, in your freshman and sophomore years. By the time you get to your junior and senior years, you're taking classes that are more advanced within your major, as well as wrapping up your degree requirements. So 1xxx courses are freshman/basic classes, 2xxx courses are sophomore/more advanced classes, and 3xxx/4xxx-numbered courses are going to be limited to people pursuing that major. The second digit shows how many hours' credit you get-- if it's x1xx, it's 1 hour's worth of credit, x2xx is 2, x3xx is 3 hours' credit; x4xx is 4. So, for example, in my junior year, and I'm majoring in Archaeology, I might take Geography 1300 (towards my degree), Political Science 2302 (towards my degree), English 2301 (towards my degree), Archaeology 3351 (towards my major), and Archaeology 3359 (towards my major). So I have one freshman-level course, two sophomore-level courses, and two junior-level courses, and I'm taking a 15-hour courseload. So if I've structured my schedule correctly, I would probably have three classes MWF, and two classes TTh. My MWF classes would probably each be an hour long, and my TTh classes would each be 1.5 hours long, so that I spent-- you guessed it!-- three hours a week in each class. :) In the case of a four-hour science with a lab, for scheduling purposes, it was treated as three hours of lecture, plus 1 hour of lab each week. In the case of a four-hour language... I don't remember there being anything different about the scheduling from a normal three-hour class, although there was certainly way more time spent after class on homework. In the case of a one-hour PE class, we also spent the normal three hours a week, although we didn't get three hours' worth of credit.

In real life, it's usually best to plot out all the courses needed to graduate with your degree and your major, and then make sure you sign up for them evenly, so you have a good mix of easy classes and hard classes, degree-specific classes and major-specific classes, and you earn your prerequisites early on, so that you don't have to be delayed in signing up for the more advanced stuff. You don't want to end up taking Greek and Latin in the same semester (unless you have superpowers), and you don't want to spend seven semesters moseying along with only 12 hours each... and then be surprised, "Why is everyone graduating without me?!" and realize that you need 145 hours to graduate, and you still have 61 hours left to earn. :p

So, that's pretty ordinary for a lot of US universities, both public and private. However, as was pointed out above, UCLA does things differently, with the quarter system. For the 2018-2019 school year, the dates run: fall (Sept 24-Dec 14th) / winter (Jan 2-March 22nd) / spring (March 27-June 14th) / summer. They also seem to have five different summer sessions: your choice of a 6, 8, 9, and 10-week Summer A (they all begin on June 24th, but they have different ending dates), as well as a Summer C (Aug 5-Sept 30th).

Rather than measuring things in hours, they call them "units" at UCLA. Just a quick glance at their course catalog shows there isn't a correspondence between how many units something is, versus how much time you spend in that class. So if I'm an Anthropology major, and I pick up Human Evolution or Animals in Anthropology or Culture and Society, they're each worth 5 units, but Human Evolution consists of 3 hours of lecture, and 1 hour of discussion; Animals is a three-hour seminar; and Culture and Society is three hours of lecture, one hour of discussion, and fieldwork.

So-- I think it's one of those things that's like setting your story at Oxford or Cambridge. The people who have been there will say, "Wait, that's not how things work here--!" So the easy path is, "I want to create a fictitious university where I can make up my own rules".

But if you're set on it being UCLA, it's good to be accurate, so you might find some sort of UCLA message board, and make a post. "Hey, I'm writing a story. Can a current UCLA student share what this quarter's schedule looks like for them?"
 

benbenberi

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So-- I think it's one of those things that's like setting your story at Oxford or Cambridge. The people who have been there will say, "Wait, that's not how things work here--!" So the easy path is, "I want to create a fictitious university where I can make up my own rules".

But if you're set on it being UCLA, it's good to be accurate, so you might find some sort of UCLA message board, and make a post. "Hey, I'm writing a story. Can a current UCLA student share what this quarter's schedule looks like for them?"

I think that for someone who has no first-hand experience of any university in the US, making something up is a much worse choice than researching a real one. For a major institution like UCLA, with lots of programs & a huge student body, there is a massive amount of information available online of all sorts.

I recommend starting at the official university websites.

And just poking around the internet can get you some interesting and useful stuff.

 

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DimelioraL: Just for fun, Justine Bateman (80s sitcom Family Ties) went to UCLA and earned a bachelor's in computer science. She graduated a couple years ago, but you can look through her Tumblr site to see her weekly/daily experiences as a student and lots of pictures of campus.

http://getacollegelife.tumblr.com/
 

Roxxsmom

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Students choose classes each semester. A typical lecture course may meet two days a week (M/W or T/TH), or perhaps three (MWF most commonly). Most courses are 3-4 units, though some may be more or less. Science labs can be part of a lecture course too, or treated as a separate course. A typical load is 15 units a semester (or quarter for a quarter system), with 12-18 being a range for full time students. A unit translates to approximately an hour of lecture instruction per week or three hours of lab per week. Labs, of course, are more typical for science majors, though they do have language labs and so on also. Science majors tend to spend more hours each week in class because many of their major's courses have labs that meet once, or sometimes twice, a week for three hours (but three hours of lab is just one unit again).

Arranging one's schedule and getting the classes one wants and needs to stay on track can be challenging for students, even with online enrollment.

How they spend their time outside of class depends on many things: how studious they are, how social they are, what their hobbies or extracurricular activities are, what kind of coursework they are taking, whether they have to work outside of class to make ends meet (many US students do these day, and quite a lot have to work more than 15-20 hours a week at a job), family responsibilities and so on.

The formula for study is supposed to be 2-3 hours a week of study outside of class for every unit (or hour spent in class), but as someone who teaches at a college (a community college in my case, but I've also taught at four-year colleges and universities), I can say fewer and fewer students do any work outside of class. Boy does it show, though. This may be different at a prestigious university like UCLA. Even so, students vary greatly in their study habits, even so.

I'm guessing students at residential colleges do find time to socialize and participate in extracurricular activities, though. Drug and alcohol use and abuse are issues on campus, with opioid abuse becoming more of a thing. Extracurricular activities include clubs focused on specific interests or majors, academic societies, fraternities and sororities (for some students but certainly not all), religious organizations, intramural sports leagues, club sports and so on.

A studious student, however, who works 20 hours a week or more and is taking a full load of 15 units probably doesn't have time to do much of anything outside of class, even sleep. A student whose parents are able to pay for college (fewer of those now, as even a public university like UCLA costs tens of thousands a year to attend), or who is subsisting entirely on loans, will have more free time. So will students in easier majors.

Dorms in the US are typically co-ed, and many even have co-ed bathrooms these days. You'll have to do a bit of research to learn about what the dorms are like at UCLA, which halls are what, and so on. Students are generally free to come and go as they please and to have visitors day and night, but they may be stricter about alcohol in dorm rooms than they were when I was in college (at UC Davis they were pretty lax in the 80s). At a school like UCLA, I'm guessing that mostly underclassmen live in dorms, though, and third and fourth (and beyond) year students may live in apartments off campus. Though they may have upperclassmen dorms or student apartments at UCLA. You'd have to research that. Some students may have families in the area they live with too, at UCLA.

Some US students take longer than four years to finish too, since 12 units is the minimum full-time load, but you need 15 units a semester to graduate. It was the norm back in my college days, but they've gotten stricter than they used to be, plus college has gotten so crazy expensive, more students are in a hurry to get out.
 
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Good comments all above. A couple of nuances. UCLA is a big state school (University of California system). Private schools (e.g., Stanford University, or the University of Southern California) may differ in some of these details. Also, first- and second-year undergraduate students are usually occupied in taking required "core" courses. More advanced students will generally be taking more courses in their declared major study field.

Smaller schools may also be either affiliated with the state, or private. Many are religiously-sponsored. These can be highly flexible in their academic structure and requirements.

caw
 

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I taught at UCLA.

The regular school year consists of three ten-week quarters; Fall, Winter and Spring.

There are two primary summer sessions; one longer than the other, but those are voluntary (and cost extra).

Juniors are concentrating on taking courses in their major. They'll probably have five classes. Science classes tend to have labs in addition to lectures. Some classes are huge; the entry level classes in the sciences and humanities may have hundreds of students, going to large classes to listen to lectures, then in smaller classes (c. 20-25) for labs (sciences) and discussion (humanities).

A lot of what you want to know will depend on what their majors are.

There's a geographic, and to some extent, socio-cultural divide at UCLA; North Campus is where the arts and humanities, and social science departments are located, mostly.

The dorms are all on South Campus. Some have their own dining halls. Some of the newer dorms are designed around a theme, like the kind of major their students have, and they have faculty living there as well.

There's a chronic shortage of housing on Campus and in the general area. Rent is very high off campus.
South campus is the site of most of the sciences and the medical school.

SoCal is warm enough to be outside pretty much all year round, though you might need a sweatshirt or a sweater.

It does rain; when it rains, parts of the campus can flood, a little, with water collecting at doorways on the lower parts of campus.

LA is very very large. UCLA is on the West side, in a suburb called Westwood.

The campus reflects that in terms of people studying, chatting, and eating at tables outside (as well as inside, too).

UCLA is a very wired campus; WiFi and high speed broadband in the dorms. Lots of online instruction.

You pay (a fair amount) to park on campus. It's very expensive, and competitive.

You might find it worth while to lurk in this Reddit community for a while, and then, maybe asking some questions. But LURK FIRST.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ucla/
 
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mselephant2015

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Wow guys - thank you all SO MUCH for taking the time to help me. I am literally bowled over. Wish I'd been here three years ago when I started writing the book! I've put it on hold for the moment because the amount of research I've been doing thanks to your help...honestly, thank you ever so much. I should had given everyone a rep point - if I missed you, please tell me, because I am very grateful.
 

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I'm not at UCLA, but I am a Junior in college currently.
I have two one-hour classes that meet M/W/F, two hour and a half classes that meet T/TH, and one three hour class that meets T only.
Most of my classmates have similar schedules. I scheduled all my classes to start at 11, because I'm not a morning person, and I get done around 1 or 2 everyday, except Tuesdays, when I'm done at 6ish. I also try to keep my classes back-to-back, but other people like to spread them out and have a few hours of free time between them.

My school doesn't have any classes before 7am and there's no night classes on Friday. Most classes count for 3 credits and therefore meet a total of three hours a week. It is possible to have a day without any classes, but it usually means you stack a lot of classes on the other days, or end up with night classes.

A lot of my friends are also doing an internship, which counts as credits, but the schedule of that depends on what the internship is.
 

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Ok, I spent some time in England nearby the Oxford campus (so to the extent Oxbridge is different from your experience sorry) and England but there are several different life things you may need to factor in planning your story.

First, UCLA sprawl is much more likely to be different in your story. Many people in Los Angeles need to have a motor vehicle to get around as our public transport is not as successful as it is in the UK. For Freshman, you could have them be in dorms and travel very little. However, if you're using LA beyond the placeholder American town, you may need to address that.

American college is not mandated to be over in four years. I technically did my undergraduate education in 3 years by doing classes over the summer. Some take as long as six years. Longer than that, and your character may not graduate. That being said, most people would still prefer to refer to themselves as freshmen, sophmores, juniors, or seniors. Longer times in college tend to happen if a person changes majors. It's my understanding that it's much harder to change majors as you get to pick your major based off your post high school exit exam results (oversimplying).
 

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Thank you so much for your advice :D In an ideal world I'd go on a research trip to UCLA but thank God for the internet! I do have another question that one (or many) of you may be able to answer.

One of my characters has a boyfriend, who claims he's training to be a teacher and that's why he's sitting in on her classes. In reality he's a drama student who's auditing (that's the right word, right?) and using her to prepare for an audition for a play about a teacher having an affair with a student. So he's only pretending to be a trainee teacher. Does that make sense? From what I've read up on, you can pay to sit in on classes but you won't get the degree at the end - auditing? And as for the relationship; it wouldn't be illegal, as both parties are consenting adults, but it wouldn't be proper either, correct? One being a student, the other pretending to be a trainee teacher? It makes so much more sense in my head, I assure you.
 

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Auditing a class. Paying for the class but never receive a grade or a pass fail. You get to sit in on lectures, take notes, ask questions, use the professor's office-hour time, and so on. You pay for the information and to have your questions answered. Some do this for exposure to something hard, like advanced math, before they take it for real.

Some colleges limit the amount of classes one can audit. Check UCLA's guidelines.

There are strict guidelines about teachers dating students. Check for UCLA's Code of Conduct or Conduct Codes. This should have information about students not dating faculty. If a student breaks the conduct code, they may be kicked out of the school. In the U.S., schools are given charters by the state. The schools must pass accreditation guidelines created and checked by chea.org. Schools are broken up into geographical regions. Maybe, if a school permits this thing, the state may revoke the school's charter (not allowing them to exist). Only colonial schools (like Harvard, founded in 1636) can survive without charters, but these schools subscribe to Chea.org's guidelines regardless.

I do not know where you would find the information of the Chea angle, but I'd stick to the Conduct Codes.
 
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Enlightened

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If the conduct codes do not have the information, check faculty handbooks. I do not know if each department, in Academic Affairs, have different faculty handbooks (or one for the entire university). This should have information on dating students.

Technically, the university is a marketplace. Students go to the marketplace to exchange property rights (tuition for intellectual property) with the professors. Each must subscribe to the rules of the marketplace. At the very least, there are ethics issues with students and teachers dating.
 

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Thank you so much for your advice :D In an ideal world I'd go on a research trip to UCLA but thank God for the internet! I do have another question that one (or many) of you may be able to answer.

One of my characters has a boyfriend, who claims he's training to be a teacher and that's why he's sitting in on her classes. In reality he's a drama student who's auditing (that's the right word, right?) and using her to prepare for an audition for a play about a teacher having an affair with a student. So he's only pretending to be a trainee teacher. Does that make sense? From what I've read up on, you can pay to sit in on classes but you won't get the degree at the end - auditing? And as for the relationship; it wouldn't be illegal, as both parties are consenting adults, but it wouldn't be proper either, correct? One being a student, the other pretending to be a trainee teacher? It makes so much more sense in my head, I assure you.

Is the male student undergraduate or graduate?

Is the female a lecturer, a faculty member, or a graduate student?

You might spend some time reading the UCLA student newspaper The Daily Bruin.

I'd be a little cautious about specifically identifying UCLA; they do have lawyers, and they do sue. You could just say "UC" without identifying a campus.
 

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First, UCLA sprawl is much more likely to be different in your story. Many people in Los Angeles need to have a motor vehicle to get around as our public transport is not as successful as it is in the UK. For Freshman, you could have them be in dorms and travel very little. However, if you're using LA beyond the placeholder American town, you may need to address that.

I spent twenty years + in L.A. without being able to drive. The bus systems (Santa Monica, Culver City and MTD) all use the UCLA campus as a hub.

There's also a stellar rapid transit train now, all the way from down town to a bus stop that's walking distance to UCLA.

Parking on campus is both difficult to get (there's not nearly enough) and very, very expensive.

Regarding time to complete the degree, there are time limits and they are enforced. There's a "time to degree" rule, and you have to have really good reasons (like an illness or accident) for not completing your degree in a reasonable amount of time. It's not rare to finish in three years, if you attend summer school, and it's slightly unusual to take 5 years. It's expensive.
 
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mselephant2015

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Is the male student undergraduate or graduate?

Is the female a lecturer, a faculty member, or a graduate student?

You might spend some time reading the UCLA student newspaper The Daily Bruin.

I'd be a little cautious about specifically identifying UCLA; they do have lawyers, and they do sue. You could just say "UC" without identifying a campus.

O_O You know, having been working on this book for three years, that thought has NEVER occurred to me. I've thought about it in regards to using song lyrics and real bands but the actual college? Nope, didn't occur to me at all. So going off that thought alone (because I feel like that thought has hit me like a shovel to the face. Why did I NOT think of that?), should I use a fictitious college and base it on UCLA without actually mentioning the college or any of its associated buildings? "Inspired by" as they say?
 

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That's what I would do. Plus, you're not going to be nailed for "getting UCLA wrong." You can use UCLA for inspiration, and depart from your model at will.