Easier said than done, but with the help of the registrar’s course evaluation results, you just might unearth a few of the intellectually fulfilling courses you imagined finding here – or at least avoid the universally despised.

graph by Nathan Serota '14

Humanities students had the highest overall satisfaction with the quality of their courses, rating them 4.1/5, while engineering and natural sciences students tied for the lowest course satisfaction at 3.7.

Among the departments, humanistic studies and East Asian studies grabbed top ratings at 4.5 and 4.4, respectively.  Neuroscience and linguistics students were the least happy with their classes, at 3.1 and 3.2, which goes to show that the outlook for the engineers and natural science students, whose departments rank solidly in the middle of the pack, isn’t so bleak after all.

If you do find your department trailing behind the happy-go-lucky humanities division, you can still avoid the lowest-rated classes.  ORF 245: Fundamentals of Engineering Statistics, and ORF 311: Optimization under Uncertainty tied for the dubious honor of least satisfying course, at 2.3.  WWS 300: Democracy was close behind at 2.4, followed by LIN 201: Introduction to Language & Linguistics with 2.5.

At the other end of the spectrum, there were several classes scoring a perfect 5 (including quite a few Woody Woo seminars, perhaps to make up for the required Democracy class).

Happy shopping! (?)

Ice, ice, baby - where were you freshman year?

You know when you’re picking classes and you found the perfect SA and an English class that looks awesome and you’re really excited, and then it turns out they’re at the same time? Or when you spend five hours trying to decide between ECO 101 and ECO 100? (Don’t do it if you don’t have to.)

Well it looks like Gyeong-Sik Choi ‘10 is looking out for you, because he’s created the new Integrated Course Engine. Or ICE.

Besides having a sweet name, the searchable engine takes all the classes you’re thinking of signing up for, compiles reviews from the Student Course Guide and course descriptions in different panes, and lays them out for you in a neat little schedule.

Bam. Course-picking just got a little easier.

(image via Michael Yaroshefsky’s email to USG News subscribers)

source: backstreets.com

By now it’s obvious that Princeton professors have a big old crush on Bruce Springsteen.  First there was this fall’s course on the sociological implications of the Boss.  Next up: AMS401: At Home in New Jersey, a spring seminar that promises to investigate Bruce’s first studio album Greetings From Asbury Park “at a more sophisticated and advanced level.”

But elsewhere, (less sophisticated?) Bruce-watchers seem to have grown weary of the Jersey Shore troubadour.  Hipster collective Pitchfork Media gave Springsteen’s latest  effort, Working on a Dream, a lackluster 5.8 out of 10 and called the track Queen of the Supermarket “Maybe the worst thing he’s ever written.” (Ouch.)  They also named the album’s cover art the absolute Worst of 2009.  (Ouch again.  Also: true.)

So who wins–Indies or Eggheads?

Intellectuals, for never underestimating the absolute power of the Bruce.  How much of a god is this man?  Just look at the recent New Jersey gubernatorial race. Governor-elect Chris Christie said during the race that he had been to 120 of Springsteen’s performances during his lifetime, including international shows in Paris and London, compared to defeated incumbent Jon Corzine’s record of “about a dozen.”  Our  governor-elect even hired an E-Street cover band, the B-street band, to fill in at his first party as Governor-elect of this state after Springsteen rejected Christie’s invitation.

If Springsteen can manage to  get a supernerdy conservative elected over a zillionaire incumbent,  he’s still rocking.

Bruce has been getting a lot of love from national politicians as well. “I’m the president, but he’s the boss,” President Obama said of the singer at a dinner honoring Springsteen’s lifetimes worth of contributions to the performing arts.  Truer words have never been spoken.

As a Jersey resident, I have to say: suck it, Pitchfork.  All hail the Boss. (But maybe we all need a graphic design course next year.)

Machines: Winning the War on Paper

Course offerings came out last week, and something felt different.

Fall break at home has roughly the same effect on my brain as high-caliber Novocaine, so the course guide had my full attention as soon as the website was up. I had never gone on the website first – it was always the place I went after I had my initial list of courses, gleaned from flipping through the thin, pulpy sheets of the paper course booklet. But how different could it really be?

Really, really different. I was completely overwhelmed. I tried looking at only one department at a time, but even then I was just staring at a list of numbers and course titles. Sure, more information was only a click away. But something about the process seemed too active – I was not browsing, I was power searching.

Why I care (and you should too!) after the jump.

And there’s something to be said for browsing. I talked to a friend who lamented that she could no longer take her time to ritualistically circle interesting courses on her first pass through the booklet. I loved being able to look through the departments I would never normally take a course in, just to see if anything caught my eye (it’s also really fun to imagine an alternate reality where I’m an ELE major).

The conspiracy theorist in me wants to point to the recent switch from textbooks to kindles in some classes, and suggest that the university is trying to recoup the losses to the endowment by crippling the paper industry and shorting paper companies. But the reality is probably much more benign. The move online saves paper, and money, and if this is one of the little things that students have to give up while the school cuts $170 million, I’m okay with that. But, I do think there’s one big change that could really help the current system.

Bring back the joy of browsing. Add an abstract to each course, so as we scroll through, we get a little more than a course name – give us a short summary, prerequisites, days and times, maybe even a little reading list. Something has been lost in the move away from the cheap paper course offerings, but it won’t be that hard to find.

(image source: wikicommons)