Student Voices: Course Selection at Barnard

Hello, everyone, and happy November! (If I sound bizarrely cheerful for being in the midst of an onslaught of research papers and Latin quizzes, I assure you, it is the four free coffee refills I just had.)

I’m at the Hungarian Pastry Shop—something of a Columbia institution—trying  to read Lincoln speeches and pull together research on the New York intellectuals in the Cold War, but I thought I’d take a break to tell you a little about course selection. “Program filing,” as it is called, only takes a few days to accomplish, but it carries a lot of weight, as I’m sure you can imagine. The basic protocol is this: at the end of each semester you choose classes for the following semester, and you sign up for them at your allotted time. Then you meet with your advisor to confirm that your choices are responsible and logical, and—ta da!—you have a tentative schedule. Once classes start the next semester, you have another window to add or drop classes once you see what they’re like, and then you meet with your advisor once again to finalize everything. It is delightfully flexible, and though it can be stressful, you can always find a schedule that works for you.

I know that was a lot of information in one go, so let me expand. (This is where it will become blatantly obvious how much of a nerd I am, because I get SO EXCITED when we get to pick out new classes…) All of the classes, at Barnard and Columbia alike, are published online in the CU Course Directory. The listings include professors, days and times, prerequisites, and often short summaries of the syllabi. It is then up to each student to sort through the classes and select ones that are both exciting and useful for her course of study (i.e. fulfills requirements for our major or minor or for the distribution requirements—the “nine ways of knowing”). Of course, we also can take electives just because they fascinate us; not every course need do something for your graduation requirements. ‘Tis the beauty of our liberal arts education!

We then enter the call numbers from the directory into eBear, our student website, and slowly a schedule comes together. Often it takes quite a few tries to find courses that fit into your schedule and have enough room in them. That said, if you have a plan-B program filed in November, you can go to classes from your plan-3A schedule in January and talk to professors, and very often you can get into even full classes.

So, for example…me. I have been just about drowning in extra classes this fall (they were just so interesting, the profs so wonderful—I couldn't say no!). I have decided to go a bit lighter next semester so that I can actually enjoy the glories of being in class. If all goes according to plan, I will take a research seminar with Eric Foner (did you read his American history textbook in high school?), another seminar with Adam Kirsch (have your seen that name in the New York Times or the New Republic?), and a Virgilian poetry class (oh, yes)—and then three or four ballet classes. The first course is for my major—History—but also because there is no one with whom I’d rather learn how to research than Eric Foner. The last one is for my minor in Latin. But the Kirsch seminar on David Foster Wallace and all five days a week on dancing are purely for fun. And this sort of intellectual exploration (that word is too cold… Intellectual revelry!) is not only accepted, but highly encouraged.

This, my friends, it a pretty sweet gig we have going here.

Best,

Chloe Hawkey '16

If you have any questions, even vague and confused ones, about course selection, courses themselves, professors, history, Latin, literature, please let me know! You can email me at cih2112@barnard.edu.