The Holidays may be over... but shopping has just begun!

By "shopping", I am of course referring to class shopping. For those of you not familiar with the term, Yale allows all of its students to "shop" classes that they are interested in at the beginning of each semester . Unlike most colleges, you aren't required to finalize a schedule before the semester begins and you don't have to hand in a finished schedule until a few weeks into the semester. This allows you to test out a slew of different classes, get a feel for the professors and the workload, and construct that PERFECT schedule where you only have class on Tuesday and Thursday, etc, etc.

Most students shop between 5-10 classes, though some have been known to shop crazy a number. Even if classes are offered at the same time, professors don't mind if you get up half-way through and leave to visit another class, they understand it's shopping period and that you may be looking at multiple options.

I'm not a super-shopper, so I try to keep my list to around 8 and choose 4 or 5 - here's what I've been looking at this semester, keep in mind that I'm an Economics and International Studies double major.

ECON 474 / INTS 258 - Economic Policy Lessons From Japan (seminar)

ECON 325 / INTS 352 - Economics of Developing Countries

INTS 427 - Social Entrepreneurship in Developing Countries (seminar)

ECON 252 - Financial Markets

HSAR 115 - Intro to History of Art: Renaissance to Present

FREN 170 - Introduction to French Literature (Seminar)

FREN 376 - The Two Congos: Literature and Culture (Seminar)

MGMT 882 - Financial Statement Analysis (Seminar taught in the Business School)

Of these I'll most likely choose 4 or 5 and of those probably 3 seminars. As you can see, what's great about Yale is the number of seminars offered. I usually only take 1 lecture class a semester as I like the more direct student-professor interaction in seminars.

The other great thing about shopping is that the workload is usually pretty light as professors realize that schedules aren't finalized yet. Consequently, there's lots of time to get back into the swing of school after break, hang out with your friends, frolic in the fresh snow, go sledding at the Divinity School Hill, etc. All things considered, some of my best weeks at Yale have been during shopping period.

I hope that gave you a better idea of what beginning of semesters are like at Yale and I want to wish everyone a great beginning of the semester and happy new year!!!!