You can’t shop for classes if there aren’t any.
It was almost too easy last spring—I probably should have known that the tidy little class schedule I had composed for Fall 2021 would eventually self-destruct. And self-destruct it did, literally a few days before classes were scheduled to begin.
One of my classes changed times in order to move to a better-ventilated classroom, but it conflicted with another course in my perfectly-planned schedule. Certain people need structure and can be sent into total tailspins when things like this happen. I am certain people. As much as I’d love to go with the flow, all the self-help advice in the world will not change the way my brain works.
To make matters worse, at this point in my Smith career every class I take has to check off multiple major requirements—no easy task at any point, but especially when limitations on class size are stricter than usual and when I have limited credits left with which to complete my major. Also, as an Ada, other major responsibilities (like solo-parenting and dog-momming) basically mean night classes are a no-go.
This is how my last-minute scramble for one more class went down:
First I tried to squeeze into a waitlisted seminar. The professor was amazingly gracious, loved the samples I sent and even supported my effort to make the impossible possible, but the classroom occupancy was limited. Of course everyone who’d already been selected showed up, so there I sat, feeling like a thirteenth wheel until I was able to quietly slink off to cry.
I then decided perhaps a Five College Consortium class, despite the commute, wouldn’t be the end of the world. I pored through the catalog and made a list of classes that would check off the boxes I needed. I found four. Four. I dutifully sent out emails to all the professors and awaited response.
The professor of an Indigenous Literature class at UMass, my first choice, was the first to respond to let me know he had a few seats left. I was ready to go when I noticed it was only a three-credit course.
No problem, I thought, I could fill it in with a one-credit course here at Smith that didn’t require more than a few more hours of my precious morning time each week. Like yoga.
You probably know where this is going.
Waitlist. Waitlist. Waitlist. Waitlist.
The next response came from the professor at Mount Holyoke. “I’m sorry,” he said. “As much as I’d love to have you in class, we’ve had a rather intensive beginning to the semester and I am not adding any more students.”
And the last two? Apparently Amherst professors don’t respond to email. Like at all.
Eventually Smith announced a brand new class here, one in my major that checked off enough boxes to suffice. This class would mean back-to-back classes every Wednesday but such is life. My standards regarding time distribution had been lowered sufficiently. I signed on.
That first day in class, another student arrived fifteen minutes late. “I’m so sorry,” she said when she walked in. “I drove here from Mount Holyoke and couldn’t find a place to park.”
She sat down next to me and during the “get to know your classmates” part of the class, I introduced myself and mentioned that I’d tried to sign up for a class at Mount Holyoke before this class had been announced.
“Oh my god,” she said. “There’s so much going on over there right now. It’s really hard to find classes. It’s like there are too many students and not enough classes. I’m actually taking two classes here at Smith because of it.”
What the heck is going on?
I’ve heard many other students complain about the difficulty of finding courses here, an issue especially inconvenient when you’re a junior or senior and your credit bank is draining. Why are we even letting students from the other colleges enroll in courses here if we’re already short on space?
Residential colleges are feeling the shock from a year of remote learning (despite massive endowments and multi-million dollar alumni donations). I have heard similar stories from Mount Holyoke students: they’re also having challenges finding classes, and there are so many housing issues there that the college placed some of their students in dorms at Hampshire College (which of course, has a whole heap of its own issues). Meanwhile, Amherst is just ignoring everyone else and UMass, the one school large enough to perhaps provide us with some additional options, has a heap of three-credit courses and appears to be brewing up the next COVID-19 variant all on its own.
I don’t profess to know how to run a college – but even from my lowly position as a non-traditional undergrad, I’m having a hard time grasping why capping class capacities due to COVID-19 coincides with a smaller course catalog. We’re seeing the effects of Smith’s over-enrollment in other areas too. It’s clear who gains from these decisions, but it certainly isn’t the students (nice Louboutins on KMac though).
I know that the endowment isn’t just a pool of money that can be dipped into at any time—usually endowments are a complicated network of investments and donations, many of which are earmarked for specific purposes. I guess, then, that this is a call to donors and investors in Smith College: students are the ones most affected by a college administration’s decisions, and right now we are very much affected.
[Image: screenshot of a search bar with the words “shortage of classes” and the suggested results are “…classes umass amherst,” “…classes smith college,” “…classes umass,” “…classes 2021”]
