We are the Mystery Men.

Classes!

They are all so, so wonderful- Modern British Drama, Astronomy, Ancient Sexuality and Novella... and I'm auditing Entrepreneurship and German History.

Entrepreneurship bodes well. It's a strange class, with an odd, multi-pronged approach with lecturers, grant writing workshops and lessons in start-ups. The professor is a Conservatory Dean, who I did an Information Panel with over the summer with Admissions. She talks quickly but clearly about how to get funding for creative ideas.
In lighter news, I ended up sitting next to my best friend. I forgot that we can think... similarly. So, when the prof would prompt a class response, I would write a word down, and Yoshi would whisper it at the same time. These words were "niche" and "innovation." Not exactly the first words one imagines after an open-ended question.

I forgot which classroom my Modern British and Irish Drama class was in and raced up and down the 2nd and 3rd floor, looking for Professor Walker's face. It was funny to poke my head in and out of classes, hearing the little phrases: "patriarchy," "financial disincentive" and "Metternich." I arrived sweaty and 5 minutes late, and proceeded to chew out the play "Look Back in Anger." The class is stocked with theatre majors and some of the main male actors in my year (Mooney, Alex, Kevin, Sobel).

Ancient Sexuality and Astronomy promise to be brilliant; Novella starts on Monday.

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Looking over schedules walks the careful line between exciting and terrifying. Logistically, I know I can't take a super-demanding schedule given my other responsibilities, but... I want to take everything. I feel odd thinking this when I've spent the last week convincing first years not to overload themselves.

Registration at Oberlin is a funny business for a first year. There are three rungs: over the summer, you choose a first year seminar and another class ; during Orientation, you register for your full schedule; and for the following week and a half, you can add or drop classes as you please.

The middle rung is the trouble. PRESTO, the online Registration system, is pretty easy to use, but it has a few pokey points. Chief issues: the course descriptions are on a separate site and there's no auto-updating list of the open courses. This is normally not a problem... but in the last registration slot, there normally aren't so many open slots to preserve small class sizes. So, it becomes a scramble.

Which is where I come in, pointing freshmen towards open classes as they register. It's one of my favorite parts of Academic Ambassador-ing- exploring the wild jungles of Presto with first-years, slicing through the course catalogue for those amazing classes- "Mass Politics and the Media Age," "Satire," "Climate Change," "Salman Rushdie"... and snagging spots in them.

Once class starts, and Add/Drop begins, everything chills out.