Sam Dean '12 discusses the joys of trying new things, even if the experience itself is anything but joyful. 

Ruby Perlmutter '13 argues that Cornell's course enrollment policies are largely positive.

Ruby Perlmutter '13 presents her plan for a revamped distribution requirement system that would give Arts and Sciences students more freedom.

Cornell announced recently that the Dutch and Swedish programs will continue next academic year. 

How would one go about building a time machine? We don't know, but odds are Cornell — with its plethora of awesome odd course offerings — has a class for that.

To the Editor:

Re: “Operating on the Bio Major,” Opinion, Nov. 12

I would like to point out an omission in this editorial, and also make a comment.

The editorial reports the decision has been made to “... scrap the two traditional introductory courses ...” from the biology major, but two other courses that met the requirements of the biology major will also be eliminated: The summer session introductory biology courses BIO 1107 and 1108. BIO 1107-1108 will be offered in the summer of 2010, so they will be the last introductory biology courses taught at Cornell before the shift to the new system takes effect in the fall of 2010.

7:00 a.m. is too early. Course Enroll, what pre-enrollment is commonly referred to at Cornell University, should not be so early in the morning. A better time would be more like 9:00 a.m. 9:00 a.m. is early but it isn’t too early. You can wake up at 9:00 a.m. and enroll in courses and continue with your day, seamlessly. For example, if you have a class at 10:10 for which you typically wake up at 9:25, it’s not too much of an inconvenience to wake up a half-hour earlier, at 8:55, to enroll is classes. 8:55, by the way, to allow for five minutes of preparation. This involves turning on your laptop, connecting to the internet and dealing with that general early-morning fogginess.

To the Editor:

Re: “Undergrads May Teach FWS to Reduce Cost,” News, Sept. 21

I am writing to provide some clarification to my quotes in this article. I feel that, through no one’s fault but my own, my quotes may have been slightly misunderstood. I now realize that I was unclear in expressing my sentiments aptly during the interview.

Last week, as I was whiling away time between classes, I came across a review of the documentary film Examined Life. The title references Socrates, who stated, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” The film follows eight philosophers as they talk about provocative philosophical questions. “It takes tremendous discipline, it takes tremendous courage to think for yourself,” Cornel West says at the beginning of the preview. Intrigued, I looked into where it was playing. It will be shown in only three upstate New York theaters, and one of them is the Cornell Cinema.

Add/drop. What a miserable phrase. Add/Drop. Ain’t no passing craze. It’s not even hyphenated like self-respecting series’ of connecting words. It uses a forward slash, which is the bastard redheaded stepchild of Father Punctuation. But what’s really terrible about it is the fact that it means pretty much nothing beyond a headache with Cornell software.

Why do we not have a shopping period here? And why do we kind of pretend we can add courses three weeks into the semester? Every Cornell student that has yet to receive a major blow to the head realizes that if you add a course after the first week you are behind. And after the second week, well, you’re drowning in a rapidly flushing toilet filled with a Big Red deuce.