Students Add Courses to Their Shopping Baskets

Author: Megan Keenan

The beginning of classes has been frenetic this week as students scramble to finalize their schedules. Armed with add and drop cards, many students attended up to five or six classes a day looking for that perfect fit in their schedule.

Although registration occurred last spring, many students opted to "shop" for classes this fall -- attending as many as possible to determine the most appealing.

"Being a senior this year, I wanted to make sure I took full advantage of the most interesting and unique classes Middlebury offers," explained Beth Hatem '04.

Because online registration occurs so far in advance of classes, students are often ill-prepared to determine the classes they will wish to take the following semester. Classes may not be what students were expecting, or often, they hear of a different class from friends and fellow majors that is too interesting to pass up. So begins this new trend of "shopping."

"I may not have the opportunity to take, say, a music or art history class again," said Hatem, "and so I attended a number of different classes that I might not necessarily have thought about taking my freshman year. Shopping around for classes gave me the opportunity to see all the different types of classes available."

Especially for upperclassmen with graduation looming, this sampling of classes provides some reassurance that one has taken full advantage of the Middlebury classrooms.

Professors have even encouraged students to sample courses in the first week.

Professor of French Ed Knox sees class shopping as an advantage for students who are truly interested in exploring different course options. This year Knox said about 10 students contacted him after registration about the possibility of enrolling in his "Americans in Paris" American Literature course. Three of those students were allowed to enroll.

"I am not bothered at all when students visit a class during that first week to see how interested they truly are," said Knox. "I even tell my advisees to do the same if there is a course they really want to take but didn't get into during registration."

But, class shopping doesn't always happen without a hitch.

"The only thing that bothers me is when students don't inform me when they make their decision as to whether they will or will not take the course," Knox said." Especially when classes are so close to the size limit, it hurts other students' chances of getting into a class when I have to wait and see about those students higher on the wait list."

Class shopping also places strain on students who must juggle work for multiple classes before they make a decision.

Some universities provide students the opportunity to focus solely on their schedules upon arrival. Harvard University, for example, provides a built-in "shopping week" for students to attend a number of different classes and choose those that most interest them.

Middlebury's shortened 12 week semester designed to accommodate Winter Term prevents the college from structuring time specifically for shopping. Shopping among a number of different classes may mean falling behind in a class a student ultimately decides to take.

Middlebury's preponderance of small classes also makes it difficult to accommodate students at shopping time, particularly those in popular majors.

For some students, class shopping can become a necessity. Due to a significant over enrollment in the Class of 2007, and understaffing in some academic departments, many students were unable to round out their four-class schedule last spring.

Katherine Herring, a senior who was only registered for three classes coming into the fall semester, attended five separate classes one day early last week, in search of an accommodating professor whose class still had available spaces.

"Everything was full. I was starting to get very stressed that I wasn't going to be able to find a fourth class anywhere. Every class I attended was extremely overbooked - one class had almost 30 students over its initial limit! Finally I had to beg a professor within my major and he was gracious enough to let me in, even though his class was way over its normal size."

For now, students will just have to get used to carrying around a stack of those little yellow and green cards to each and every class.