Not Just a Face in the Crowd

I'm a proud member of the second largest class in the College: Literature and Arts C-37: "The Bible and Its Interpreters." I am disappointed, though, that we didn't make number one. It's not that I enrolled because I share the sentiment of Harry Starr Professor of Classical and Modern Jewish and Hebrew Literature Kugel, that students should be more interested in the foundations of the Bible than in the materialism of economics. It's just that I really wanted to be in a huge class.

Don't get me wrong--I haven't made a career out of huge classes. In fact, The Bible is about 40 times larger than any class I've ever taken. But if I'm going for a big class, I figured, it might as well be the biggest. You see, last semester my biggest class, Expos, had 17 students; I'm concentrating in Classics, so that cuts down my average class size. And without a core last semester, I had high school friends convinced that I'd secretly transferred to Amherst. "You're at Harvard," they said. "All your classes should be huge."

At the time I congratulated myself. I had avoided one of the University's most renowned pitfalls; I had professors who knew my name and discussions around small tables.

But lectures are not the evil albatrosses they are often made out to be. Many of my dormmates were in Chem 10, Ec 10 and Justice. They described foreign phenomena called "lectures," discussed going to class in Sanders and debated whether the balcony or the front row was a better option on any given day.

Once they told me about how a pencil was dropped over Sanders' balcony, right onto the head of an unsuspecting TF. I realized I was missing out; small classes were worthwhile, but I had to experience the apparent laugh-a-minute that was the Harvard lecture course.

So this semester, I enrolled in two cores: the aforementioned "The Bible" and Science B-16: "The History of Life." Coming in at about 250 students, B-16 seems positively cozy compared to the Fleet Center-like atmosphere of Sanders.

Eventually I may become frustrated by being part of Bible's faceless masses, and surely in time the concept of teaching-fellow-taught sections will become a depressing norm instead of just a new experience. But right now, there are some things I love about lecture classes.

I've realized only recently from the depths of the balcony in Sanders that teaching a lecture course is quite a different task for leading a seminar or section. Professors, while not exactly stand-up comedians (live, in Sanders, Jerry Seinfeld on evolution!), do have the difficult job of keeping students entertained. And they must do this without the benefit of discussion among all the participants.

The best lectures I've seen have been the rare combination of performance and personal connection with the audience. Professors with a real enthusiasm for the subject can draw in everyone in the room. And once the feeling of being part of a member of a faceless crowd is lifted, the stigma of lecture disappears and the learning begins.

At Harvard we're lucky enough to witness some master teachers in action. We're lucky enough to have some Professors who are able to navigate the fine line between entertainers and educators.

The time will come soon, I know, when too-large class-size becomes the bane of my existence, and I will yearn for the days of the fall of my first year, when one of my classes had only seven students.

But this semester, I'm enjoying my lectures as a surprisingly worthy alternative to seminar and discussion. For now, I revel in the fact that I am in the College's second-largest class. And I'm looking forward to seeing how things evolve.

Susannah B. Tobin is a first-year living in Hollis Hall.