They meet in Sanders Theater, Paine Hall, Emerson 105 and the Science Center. They all have cute nicknames. And they are almost always lotteried.

They are Harvard's "guts." And everyone wants to take them.

But the professors who teach them--and many former students--say that these courses, which Harvard students search for in the CUE guide and The Confidential Guide each semester, are not as easy as the reputations they enjoy.

Every first-year student has heard the stories of lectures no more difficult than listening to a piano recital a few days a week, a literature class which shows the film "Robocop" in order to underscore some of the major themes of the course, and a professor who actually takes his students to a brewery on field trips.

But what first-year students hear, professors usually get wind of too. And most of those scholars whose courses have earned the title "gut" say they are trying to change their courses' images.

Professors of even the most notorious gut classes acknowledge that feedback from the CUE guide, students and teaching fellows pressures them gradually to toughen requirements in order to have a more structured course and rid themselves of the dreaded title "gut."

And so, while "Heroes for Zeroes," "Sex" and "Jesus and the Easy Life" may all face lotteries this year, the lucky students who win a seat in their class of choice may get more than what they bargained for.

`Heroes for Zeroes'

For most current students, the paradigm gut class has always been Literature & Arts C-14: "The Concept of the Hero in Greek Civilization," a class more commonly known as "Heroes for Zeros." But undergraduates responding to last year's class in the CUE guide rated the course at 3.0 for workload and 2.8 for difficulty--only slightly below the 3.1 and 3.0 respective averages for all of last fall's Core courses.

Gregory Nagy, Jones professor of Classical Greek Literature and professor of Comparative Literature, claims that the course's lingering reputation as a gut may surprise students once they have enrolled. Starting last year, Nagy beefed up the course requirements, and the one-time gut may never be the same.

Nagy asserts that although the course will assign one less paper this year, the readings have been getting gradually more comprehensive.

"Some people go into the course expecting a gut....They may get an academic challenge they weren't expecting," Nagy says. "It requires a great deal of thinking. You have to do a very close reading of the texts."

And students who took "Heroes" last year echo Nagy's sentiment.

"You hear so much hype about it from the Confi Guide, the CUE guide and upperclass publicity that I went into it thinking it would be a gut," said Matt D. Tousignant '93. "It's not a gut at all. I'm not even looking at the CUE guide anymore."

But, while "Heroes" may be shedding its easy reputation, head teaching fellow Lynn M. Sawlivich '83 says he has seen a hidden benefit for "Heroes" in the easy street aura that has hung over the course.