Explaining Shopping Week
Let me preface what I’m about to write with the acknowledgement that I understand the extreme privilege of not only having shopping week, but also getting to complain about shopping week. Thousands of college students make it through their four years of pre-registration just fine without batting an eyelash or two.
That being said, shopping week is great in two ways: it is a gift, and it is a way to start the semester with high blood pressure. Harvard, among a few other schools (which I’ll address in a moment) opts to forego pre-registering for courses.
While many people you know register for spring classes in October or November, my friends and I often don’t know what we’re taking until the end of the first week of school. Even if we walk into the new semester with a plan, things always, always change.
How does it work? Students add courses to a list in our online portal, find the location of the ones that interest them, and attend class like any other day. The exception is, though, that people will regularly wander in and out of classrooms, even once class has started. In large lectures, this isn’t too disruptive, because there’s generally enough space for people to find a seat or stand in the aisles.
But for courses that already have an enrollment cap — like seminars, or even small or popular lectures — shopping can become pretty painful. I’ve been to courses that had to relocate classrooms entirely on the fly, simply to accommodate all the people who showed up. Even if that doesn’t happen, the packed room can make it uncomfortable for students to sit or stand.
Of course, things get more complicated if you want to shop multiple classes that meet at the same time, at which point most students make a calculation: will you get a friend to grab a syllabus if you can’t make it? Which class will you probably end up taking, if you’re realistic? How does each one fit in with your requirements?
Then there are lotteries for classes, which most, if not all, Harvard students will encounter at some point. Unlike pre-registration at other schools, according to which seniors register first, then juniors, and so on, anyone can show up to any class, and theoretically, anyone can petition to get in.
Though it can be stressful, especially when all you want is to know what readings to do and how much cash you’re going to drop on textbooks, the lottery process of applying for a course online, writing a few words why you want to take it (if you meet the possible prerequisite), and waiting for the fated email is an experience that can be worth it.
The thought of registering for a class and being unable to drop it or swap it for another if something goes unexpectedly wrong is something we all try to avoid.
The most ironic thing about shopping week is how long it seems to be — perhaps longer than any other throughout the semester. (Not counting finals, or reading period, of course.) Not knowing for sure which course we can register for ahead of time, or indeed, until the end of the first week of classes, can be stressful.
Yet students are nearly universally satisfied. I myself would not have chosen to major in English had I not shopped an introductory linguistics course my freshman fall. (Yes, the subjects are unrelated, but trust me, one thing led to another, and now I study literature.)
The ability to try a course we never thought we would find ourselves in is one of the most amazing things about this registration system. It’s a tradition we love to hate.
Of course, we’re not alone. Brown, Yale, and McGill are among a few other universities that have their own version of shopping week, though none is as wide-open as ours. (Which is not necessarily a bad thing.) At some of these schools, shopping lasts two weeks, and students register in advance with the knowledge that they have more flexibility than if they simply pre-registered.
A two-week shopping period combined with some form of pre-registering gives students the ability to visit other courses without worrying about a tight add-drop deadline; whenever that day is, students can be confident they made the best decision they could about their classes.
At Harvard, today was the last day of shopping week: I ended up in a course that I didn’t think I would take, but in which I ended up impulsively enrolling. I waited for some lottery results to come out (luckily in my favor!), and I chose a few courses without any scheduling headaches.
Such is the experience of many. Painful, stressful, filled with anxious and repetitive email-checking — many of us wouldn’t give it up for anything.
