Aliya Sternstein: Help on a complicated four-year journey

College. Grown-ups call it a vacation. Thoreau called it an experiment. I'd call it the closest thing to an acid trip I'm ever going to take.

Penn would agree with Thoreau, though. And this is why the College is wisely experimenting with a pilot curriculum, rather than mind-altering drugs. Here's the premise of Penn's trial run:

A few hundred Quakers, the envy of their flummoxed peers with hundreds of course requirements, need not spend so much time picking general requirement courses at the onset. Instead, these 200 trial students from each incoming class will embark upon a different maze.

For the general requirement, they take four interdisciplinary courses from four categories --"Structure and Values in Human Societies," "Science, Culture and Society," "Earth, Space and Life" and "Imagination, Representation and Reality" -- instead of the cumbersome 10 courses from seven sectors. And they put their extra energy into strategically planning electives. The participants must also complete a major-related research project, under the watchful eye of their College advisors.

This experiment has been ongoing for two years. Four hundred sophomores and freshmen have undergone classes like "Good Government, East and West," "Biology, Language and Culture" and are now experiencing timely options such as "War, Violence and Political Vision" -- conducted by two or three profs.

The subjects of our study forge their identities off the beaten path -- away from the major and general requirement. In this experiment, limited general requirement course options let loose our young students. The answers to all their questions lie in electives.

Penn is not the first university to test a curriculum overhaul. Duke and the University of Chicago also experimented with mind expansion.

Duke cracked down on its program -- requiring students to take classes in four specific areas of knowledge. Previously, students slipped by with just three areas of knowledge.

The University of Chicago, often thought of as rigid, loosened up and reduced its requirements.

But the University's experiment, steeped in Franklin tradition, waving a kite through lightning, will not discover electricity unless it promotes electives. At the heart of the new core curriculum is the freedom to choose. If the administration assumes students left to their own devices will sample a blend of the University's finest pickings semester after semester, deans will be disappointed to find students unintentionally picking impractical wastes of time.

It's true that this university boasts courses of every shape, size and color. And many -- though not all -- Penn professors care enough about teaching to give students and parents their money's worth.

But finding the right courses is the real experiment for any student. And there's no clear path that leads to results. A student can log on to the Course Scanner, the College's online course search service, meet regularly with his advisor, audit classes and still feel unfulfilled.

Alternatively, a student can flip open a timetable, ask a friend who's the best prof on the page and find the elusive "best class at Penn." Picking classes is not really a science.

We change our majors four times. We decide we want to be architects after studying business for three years. We graduate, and wish we had taken a History or Mythology course.

A student could be clueless about her interest in coastline erosion until senior year. We're not always tuned into our latent fascinations. Sometimes, we're lucky to find one stimulating course a semester. And not every student is sitting there, fretting over a well-rounded undergraduate education.

We need some reminders. But mailings, e-mails and Locust Walk flyers will end up in the trash. The University and, more importantly, students should promote electives in class and in this newspaper. Some possibilities: when we bubble in those course evaluations and stuff them in envelopes toward the end of the semester, also insert elective information in those envelopes and run an ad in The Daily Pennsylvanian with type bigger than the secret code course listings.

Advertise a diverse list of electives in the DP every day, for a week. Trigger the senses of that closet geologist's brain with a notice, shouting, "Discover your love for sediment in Geology 130 -- Oceanography." Some electives, like the Nutrition minor, have done this already -- taken a more personal, focused approach -- and been successful.

Overall, Penn's experiment sounds promising -- with the extra electives, ambitious general requirement courses and mandatory research experience. If the University had thrown in an enhanced elective navigational function, I wouldn't have minded a pilot guiding my trip. Aliya Sternstein is a senior Psychology major from Potomac, Md.

Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.