Henry Abbott

“We want shiny eyes and scrunchy faces!” Back in elementary school, that was our teachers’ cheery way of telling us it was good to endure a little confusion and difficulty working through a problem. This past summer, I was a shiny-eyed, scrunchy-faced newbie. I freaked out over every Bowdoin email that had anything in bold or all caps and spent hours sorting writing seminars and courses by time, department and interest.

My mildly alarmist—erm, I mean diligently meticulous—care turned out to not be entirely unwarranted. After the deluge of initial correspondence, there was a pause. And then, registration, the summer storm.

Don’t get me wrong: I’d rather have any summer registration process than sign up for classes two or three days before they start, as Bowdoin has done in the past. However, I had some frustrations with this year’s system and how I tried to navigate it.

 

Nobody puts baby in a bucket.

 

For starters: the buckets. Cute but consternating. After figuring out how they worked, I limited what I showed interest in. To put a history class as my top choice, I filled a bucket with the history department and math or physics—I’m a humanities girl. I tried to game the system to get a top-choice class instead of putting three options I was invested in.

This led to lots of brow furrowing and vexed mumbling. Worse, it led me to show less expansive interest—the opposite of what Bowdoin advised. I wanted to tell the school, or at least this registration algorithm, that I was intensely torn between courses on decolonizing Latin America, modern European cities and the invention of political theory. Instead, I only listed one of those courses in my carefully crafted buckets.

 

Kicking the buckets.

 

Round two of gaming the system: distribution requirements. I have no interest in contemporary dance—love you, though! But that got the same ranking in the registration book as the introductory astronomy class I enthusiastically put for both my INS and MCSR requirements.

I wound up with the same problem the buckets created. To try to get my first-choice classes, I listed them in multiple distribution requirement categories, leaving me with extremely limited options for putting second or third choices in the remaining categories.

Yes, I could have just crossed my fingers about the buckets and taken advantage of having five distribution slots instead of one more restrictive bucket. But nerves do funny things to first years who want a solid plan and some control over that plan.

 

Please, sir, may I ask some questions?

 

The final administrative touch of confusion was that not enough departments had informational meetings prior to registration.

I told you that I’m a humanities girl, but I want to survey my options before I narrow my interests—talk to lots of professors, take classes in several fields, etc. A virtual academic fair would have been helpful for determining where to start that exploration.

Some information was available, with departments such as biology and Hispanic studies open to student inquiry.

However, some were not available. For example, there was no pre-registration access to government and legal studies, which has multiple concentration tracks, some classes with prerequisites, others with none and other options that complicate registration.

I am, however, immensely grateful that the College’s system, as it is, does its best to accommodate student interests. I know from the testimony of friends at other schools that there are many worse ways!

 

Not all change is good change.

 

Despite my freshy frustrations about this year’s process, I much prefer it to what I understand about the fall 2025 system: It will be first-come, first-serve and lack consideration of items such as prior shut-out.

Of course, our professors and administrators need some uninterrupted summer vacation to re-energize and relax. But students need a registration process that makes them feel properly oriented, informed and heard. As a first year, I’m not sure how to reconcile those two things. Maybe I’ll know when I’m a sophomore.

Dessa Kuritz is a member of the Class of 2028.