New Schedule Hastens Shopping Experience

With a condensed shopping period this semester, students lost what professors gained: time.

Students no longer had an extra weekend to meet with advisors, peruse the Q Guide, and order books on Amazon.com.

But the change also meant that faculty members were able to review enrollment lists, organize sections, and send out reading assignments over the weekend after Study Card Day.

Many freshmen dealing with courses with capped enrollment said they felt pressure to make decisions faster this semester.

“I thought it was much more stressful because every night I had to figure out what classes to go to the next day, and we didn’t have a weekend to think things over,” Lillian C. Alexander ’13 said. “I was organizing binders for classes I wasn’t even taking.”

Nicolas E. Jofre ’13 said he plans to treat next week as an extension of shopping week to finalize his courses.

But many upperclassmen—used to only a week-long break between semesters—were less concerned about the new shopping week format.

Brandon T. Perkovich ’11 mulled over the course catalog during January term to avoid the potential stress of a rushed shopping week.

Hannah S. Yohalem ’10 said she was more stressed about picking the perfect senior spring course load than the condensed schedule of shopping week itself.

Nadeem E. Abou-Arraj ’12, a Peer Advising Fellow, said that he did not notice a spike in anxiety levels of his advisees.

But for him personally, the new format presented an unexpected benefit: Abou-Arraj said that the schedule change forced him to be more on top of his work sooner.

“At least this way I feel like we won’t be as behind because we are forced to start earlier,” he said.

Classics professor Emma Dench wrote in an e-mail that some undergraduates told her they were waiting anxiously until 9 p.m. on Thursday night to hear whether they had gotten into a class.

Though several professors noticed that students were slightly more frenzied than usual, the new schedule provided more time to organize class sections.

According to history professor Daniel L. Smail, who said he appreciated receiving enrollment numbers before the weekend, students were seen “milling around” the history department on Friday, frantically trying to get study cards signed.

“There was some frustration on the part of the students because faculty members aren’t often around on Fridays,” he said.

Economics 1010b instructor Christopher L. Foote is looking forward to starting sections on a Monday—as opposed to a Wednesday, like last year— because it allows professors and section leaders “a little more time to get our act together.”

“I think if any student feels like they need a little bit of extra time, or if they change their mind, we try to be as flexible as possible,” he said. “We’re not out to bust anybody’s chops.”

—Staff writer Julie R. Barzilay can be reached at jbarzilay13@college.harvard.edu.