With Pre-registration season once again upon us, it’s that time of the year when Brown students must buckle down and undertake the arduous task of actually being forced to think about what academic pursuits they’re going to pursue three months from now…

Seniors are most likely coming to the horrible realization that the only thing separating them from their job at Goldman Bain the local McDonald’s is four more credits and what’s sure to be the most epic graduation of the last decade. Meanwhile, juniors are too busy raging studying abroad to even remember to register (put down the two Euro bottle of wine and your camera for one second, I promise you’ll still be able to document your Eurotrips on Facebook when pre-registration is over).

Further down the totem pole, sophomores are surely too depressed or disenchanted with school to even open their computer, while the freshmen are once again asking: what the hell is a pin, and where do I get one?

With that in mind, we couldn’t help but wonder if searching through Banner’s extensive course listings could provide us with some much-needed guidance, helping us to better navigate this chaotic and contemplative time. Though we found little in the way of useful life advice, what we did find were some telling, if not eerily accurate, musings hidden within the inner recesses of Banner’s server.

On Sex…

HIST1973Y: Children and Childhood in America; CLPS0610: Children’s Thinking; AMCV1904H: The Teen Age; ENGN0510: Electricity and Magnetism; COLT0610D: Rites of Passage; GNSS1960N Theories and Politics of Sexual Consent; APMA2630: Theory of Probability; HIST1750: The Intimate State; MUSC0660: Sacred Harp/Shape-Note Singing; ENGN0040: Dynamics and Vibrations, AMCV1903P: Please, Please Me; ENGN1710: Heat and Mass Transfer; APMA2420: Fluid Dynamics II; AMC1903G: Oral History and Community Memory; RUSS1450: Love, Adultery, and Sexuality; PHIL0990X: Conditionals, APMA1360: Topics in Chaotic Dynamics; APMA2110: Real Analysis;  EDUC1260: Emotion, Cognition, Education  [Read more →]

If you’re not out taking advantage of the last few hours of Halloween, you’re probably stalking your crush’s schedule looking at spring courses on that new CourseKick site.  Yep, it’s pretty cool, but you might have forgotten that within the next few days you actually have to register for four or five of those enticing-looking courses.  For seniors, preregistration starts bright and early tomorrow at 8am.  Juniors will register Wednesday morning, followed by sophomores on Thursday and freshmen on Friday (all also at 8am).  If you’re a .5′er, just round down — who really talks about anything by semester level, anyway?

Registration will be open until Tuesday, November 8th at 5pm, but don’t let the week-long window fool you.  Get into those important and capped classes now and save yourself the stress later — there will be plenty of time to find even more strange and interesting courses to shop when you’re procrastinating studying for your second round of midterms.

Advising period is now open for spring pre-registration.  It’s time to dust off your advisor’s contact information and schedule a meeting to go over your courses for next semester. Make sure to get your PIN from him/her and let the Mocha-surfing begin.  Advising period closes October 28.

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Pre-registration can be stressful (who wants to get up that early?) but it can also be entertaining. If you can’t get into your favorite classes, you can at least make fun of their names, right?

Sometimes we wonder how professors come up with course titles. Can’t you just see them at their desks, thumb-twiddling and thinking, “This may not be the most straightforward or descriptive, but at least it’s the [insert superlative here; read on for examples].”

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Most of us learned from a young age not to judge a book by its cover, but nobody ever mentioned anything about judging a course by its title — or placing it into a category based on said characteristic — right?

Hence, without any further ado, the winners for …

Most creative pun

MCM1501K: Seeing Queerly: Queer Theory, Film, Video

Most obscure reference ever to appear in a course catalogue

ETHN1890E: Johnny, Are You Queer: Narratives of Race and Sexuality

Douchiest

CLAS1120G: The Idea of Self

Most emblematic of Brown

tie between SOC1650: Unequal Societies and ANTH1910E: Social Construction

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