Shopping Period

It's shopping alright, but not the fun kind. Shopping period, for those not familiar with it, is a practice some colleges engage in; rather than going for the "grin and bear it" philosophy of choosing classes and sitting through a semester in the front row with the professor affectionately known as "The Spitter," you go to as many classes as you're interested in for about two weeks. At the end of the period, you register for the ones that seem the best. It's sort of fun to go to all the different classes, but it presents some problems, such as doing homework for 9 classes until you narrow down the options.

Some people are in the habit of sitting in on a class and leaving midway through to attend another. I don't engage in that practice, but it potentially means sitting through a boring lecture. It reminds me of those times in department stores when someone's making a long-winded sales pitch for something I'm not interested in, like an orange, knitted poncho (in this case, an international relations class), but I'm too polite or too something to tell them to stop.

But my favorite part about reading week is definitely finding the classes. Even if you understand the "building code" under which buildings are labeled on the classes server and therefore have a vague idea of where the class is being held, it may be of no use. For instance, my classmates and I, searching for our seminar classroom at 9 this morning, milled around in a building looking for classroom 266. We could find 265, 264 and 267, all of which were in the same general area, but for some reason 266 was nowhere to be found. The rooms were behind a door, sitting in a ring. 264, 265, SKIP straight to 267. Despair set in after about ten minutes.

Finally, the professor came out into the hallway, wondering why his supposedly intelligent students couldn't find a classroom. It turns out that classroom 265 has a hallway that lets you in to classroom 266. So the reason we couldn't find it was because our classroom was hidden inside of another classroom. Logical enough. Oh, shopping period, and your unending surprises.

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