Messy Beginnings

We don’t exactly need a syllabus week — does anybody really? — in order to transition back to school. Even after a heavenly week of Intercession, not to mention about a month and a half without any sort of class structure, everyone appears to be ready to start up again. Just about everyone attends class and actually takes notes, or at least doesn’t fall asleep during lecture. We are back, optimistically ambitious and better rested. Still, the first week is exhausting, in a manner different from the remainder of the semester.

A good number of us are initially signed up for five or six classes and quite possibly shopping one or two. We’re tied up in class for the majority of the precious few hours of winter sunlight. We do the workload — the readings, the problem sets, the labs, studying for early quizzes — of an extra-large course load, despite the fact that we will end up dropping one or two of those classes by Friday anyway.

We make several trips to Labyrinth to buy or quickly return textbooks, sometimes waiting impatiently for the ones that are out of stock, compulsively search Amazon to see if that 30 percent discount is really paying off and somehow end up in the most clandestine and sketchy PTX exchanges on the other side of campus.

The more unlucky of us have to spend time rearranging our schedule because we have conflicts with every single one of the precept times that the professor declined to let us know until Wednesday. Others of us did not like the classes we thought we wanted to take. For those of you who have concocted the perfect schedule, revel in your accomplishment.

We have work to do, but nobody wants to do it. One week into the semester, and some already feel a week behind. The interesting readings we will do but the rather boring ones — eh, we can do those over the weekend. We procrastinate with pre-semester organizing, color-coding notebooks and taping up the class schedule, complete with the times of every professor’s office hours, most of which we will never attend anyway. But work — no, not just yet. It’s too soon.

Despite everything going on in our lives, we are especially ambitious during week one. Determined to join something new or take on leadership roles in our respective clubs. Determined to get to know our professors and earn those participation points. Blocking out the sleepless nights of last semester and planning how efficient and organized we will be this semester. Certain that we will be able to handle that one course if we really put in the requisite time. Regrets, after all, are for the end of the semester.

By the end of the week, we are thanking God for Friday. Why is week one so stressful? The University and professors expect us to commit to books, to homework and to scheduling before we can even fully figure out whether we can or want to actually take their class. Sure, it is important to start classes and to start work rather than wasting a week by handing out syllabi. A slightly exhausting week is better than a syllabus week — there is no point in pushing off the inevitable stress into the next week, especially with a shorter semester.

But the University could change a few things to make our system better. For example, let us know precept times beforehand (certainly they don’t change from the week before classes start). Make it policy to post the first week’s readings on Blackboard so that while we are still deciding exactly which classes to take, we don’t have to buy the often overpriced books from Labyrinth. Small changes could help us organize and schedule ourselves and would reduce a bit of the stress that comes with week one.

So here we are. Still fresh from the triumphs and mistakes of last semester, desperately trying to make the most of this semester. The month and a half since our last class gives us a comfortable distance from the reality of last semester. And we’ve just survived week one. As John Galsworthy said, “Beginnings are always messy.” Here’s to your week two.

Kinnari Shah is a sophomore from Washington, N.J. She can be reached at kmshah@princeton.edu.