Introducing Brown University’s “shopping period.”  A chance to make sure you, the student, sign up for classes that will expand your mind and challenge your core belief system.  A chance to find a class that grabs your attention and awakens your scholarly passion.  A chance to transition into school slowly.  An opportunity to go out every night and make acquaintances instead of acquainting yourself with the library.  A chance for upperclassmen to drop classes like Maritime Archaeology and others that stopped sounding fresh as soon as post-Spring Weekend sobriety set in.   While shopping period is a time of great freedom, it is also one of high stakes – your class schedule represents one-eighth of your college education.  To maximize your classroom satisfaction, mind these tips for crafting the perfect schedule, after the jump.

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The Orientation Welcoming Committee’s mammoth newsletter for new students has finally been released on the interwebs. If you’re a first year, you can expect to get one of these little suckers along with your Brown ID, the key to your room, and various other goodies when you first arrive on campus.  With its exhaustive list of 100+ orientation events, the orientation packet might seem somewhat unwieldy, but fear not. We’re here to weed out the fun and informative from the boring and unnecessarily.

A small minority of the events in the packet have been listed as “REQUIRED for all students.” Most of them are not listed as such, but we believe that some of the events have been miscategorized. Here are our corrections:

Optional events that should not be missed:

 Midnight organ concert (12 am, September 5): Orientation can be hugely tiring. You’ll find yourself having the same conversation (“Where are you from? What are you concentrating in? Are you excited for classes to start?”) at least fifty times during the first forty-eight hours. By the end of the second day, you might need a rest from the seemingly endless train of clumsy conversation. The midnight organ concert is a perfect opportunity to both relax and continue to bond with other first years without the constant pressure that comes with the more meet-and-greet type events. Besides, even if you’re not exhausted, you won’t want to miss hearing Brown’s kickass resident organist.   [Read more →]

Brown’s class of 2013 and transfers to other classes — a total of 1,485 news students — moved on to campus this weekend and broke the ice in all sorts of completely non-awkward ways.
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