A basketful of classes
‘Shopping’ for classes sounds like a lot of fun — the chance to go to as many classes as you like for the first two weeks before deciding on your set for the semester. Shopping the first few classes is exciting, but browsing the Harvard course catalog can be a dangerous activity — ‘Poets, poems and poetry’, ‘Ethics, economics and law’, ‘Chinese moral and ethical philosophy’, ‘Systems design and computer architecture’ — I would sign up to all of these!
But with only four precious slots, you have to start prioritising! After shopping nearly 10 classes, I settled on classes in Artificial Intelligence, Data Science and Probability Theory at Harvard and a class on Machine Learning Autonomy and Society at The MIT Media Lab! I’m also looking forward to auditing a class on the American Election at the Harvard Kennedy School. In the end I’m only taking one of the classes from the list I had made over the summer. Conclusion: it’s impossible to tell what a class will be like from the description alone! I’m really excited about the classes I have chosen though and I’m looking forward to learning lots this semester!
