Hassall-Free Fridays | A guide to better class selection

As you have probably heard, Spring Fling is this weekend. This is the grand weekend each spring semester where a small number of students are too stressed about their workload to do anything fun, and the rest are so stressed about theirs that only public drunkenness can stave off crippling depression.

Fortunately, I have here some guidelines to ensure that all your future classes are more awesome and funsies than any of the duds you’ve probably been picking by yourself. Come Monday, as you hobble out of your dorm room, wearing sunglasses inside to cope with your hangovers, maybe one of you will actually pick up this paper and read them.

Now don’t misunderstand me, what you will find here is no neatly laid-out list of how to rationally maximize your course units and fill all your requirements. That’s far too serious for a Fling column. Instead this is a distillation of my own experiences on how to have the most fun and engaging class experience possible.

College junior Barbara Darko said that it was important when choosing classes to use a variety of resources, “including Penn Course Review, the academic planning worksheet, adviser advice, sitting in on classes and the opinions of other Penn students.”

This is sound advice for the advance registration period. But advance registration is over, and it’s time to realize that the classes you picked were all awful and you should start over.

First things first, there are classes or professors that everyone really must experience while at Penn. Geology 100 is awesome, and it is an injustice of biblical proportions that professor Gomaa Omar does not have his own science-based TV show.

Horror Cinema with professor Philippe Met is as amazing as it is disturbing. But don’t take it if you’re squeamish; there are some things that you cannot unsee (like Nekromantik, which is exactly what it sounds like). Ask your friends, “What is the most ridiculously fantastic class you’ve ever taken?” If they take longer than five seconds to answer or list a class in their major, ignore them and ask someone else. Take as many of those classes as you can.

Always check the location of a class. Think carefully about whether having to take 20 minutes to get to a class is worth it. (Alternatively, walk faster. Far too many Quakers have been going at glacial pace lately.) This is especially important for classes in the morning, whether or not a 10 a.m. class is worth it has a lot to do with whether you can get up at 9:30 (or 9:45) and still make it.

Don’t take classes in David Rittenhouse Laboratory. That’s where the calculus happens. I don’t care how cool the class sounds — that place is evil.

Similarly, keep an eye on how classes fill up your week. The golden rule here is no class on Fridays. Let me repeat that: no class on Fridays. I haven’t had class on Fridays since my first year at Penn, which means for that last two years my weekends have been 50% longer than yours. Think about that.

Try to have no class on Mondays or Thursdays as well. I’ve never been able to pull this off, but hopefully you can. No class before 10 a.m. There is no such thing as morning people — only people who like to sleep in and people who are crazy.

I could go on, but I hope that you’re starting to see the point. As Penn students, we’re all going to be stuck taking classes we don’t necessarily want to or classes we enjoy but which work us into the ground. That is sadly unavoidable. But you can take steps to protect what free time you have and should always lunge to grab an amazing course that floats your way.

Enjoy Fling. Mine’s already started because I don’t have class on Fridays.

Luke Hassall is a College senior from Auckland, New Zealand. His e-mail address is hassall@theDP.com. Hassall-Free Fridays appears every other Friday.

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