It's happens to everyone.

You search the CUE Guide looking for a class with favorable--and less than difficult--ratings. But when you arrive, you find that 200 others have discovered the same thing. You can barely breathe, much less find a seat or a syllabus.

And the next day you're lotteried out.

Maybe you decide to brave the endless sourcebook line in the basement of the Science Center only to discover as you reach the bottom of the stairs the little post-it note on the sourcebook board declaring that the class's main required reading is sold out.

Finally, you decide what to take. But that means a trip to the Coop, where there's only one tattered copy of one of the 15 required books.

Such are the trials of Harvard's shopping period, the week of classes when students attend about twice as many classes as they could possibly take. They search for the most appealing time schedule, most appealing requirements--and, of course, the most appealing professor.

Now that all undergraduates have been through it at least once, the question looms: is shopping period more hassle than it's worth?

The Faculty of Arts and Sciences started debating that issue in 1961, Moore Professor of Biological Anthropology Irven DeVore said last spring.

And the idea of preregistering for classes resurfaced at Faculty Council meetings last May. But rather than take any definite position, the council simply decided the issue was worth further discussion.

The council may opt to discuss the relative merits of shopping period again this year.

While the council was out on the issue, Harvard undergraduates and professors have again undergone the semi-annual rite.

"I had the usual loosely organized chaos during the first two lectures of [Computer Science] 121, with about 105 students showing up in a lecture hall with 88 seats for a class that had about 75 students last year," Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis '68 said in an e-mail message over the weekend.

Professors and administrators say larger-than-expected attendance is the biggest problem with shopping period, while those responsible for producing course materials complain of too much guesswork.

"The people who run the Core program look at the schedules and look at enrollment for past years and make reasonable guesses," says William G. Witt, copyright officer in the Office of Sourcebook Publications.

"There are surprises every year," Witt says. "One year a class may have had 200 students, and this term it has 500 students."

Both Witt and Allen E. Powell, general manager of the Coop, admit that the result of in-semester registration is that sourcebooks and textbooks sell out and must be reordered, resulting in assignment delays for students and headaches for their professors and teaching fellows.

Some professors have devised various ways of getting around book shortages.

"That's what [library] reserves are for. We do a lot of handing out and xeroxing of materials," says McKay Professor of Applied Mathematics Anthony G. Oettinger '51, who determinedly assigned homework last week in his General Education 156 class, even though the books weren't yet in the Coop.

"In some ideal world where supply and demand can be matched, that wouldn't be a problem, but I don't know of any such world," Oettinger said.

Both Oettinger and Menzel Professor of Astrophysics David Layzer limited their course enrollments. Oettinger took the 25 students who turned in their homework the second day of class. Layzer took the first 155 who signed up for Science A-18, "Space, Time and Motion".

Other classes, including Pellegrino University Professor Edward O. Wilson's Science B-15 and Maier Professor of Political Economy Benjamin M. Friedman's Economics 1580, Literature and Arts B-54: "Chamber Music," and Literature and Arts B-10: "Introduction to Art and Architecture," were lotteried this fall.

"[Not having enough books] is a problem unless you have absolutely fixed enrollment," Oettinger says.

Other professors say they do not mind the problems inherent in shopping period.

"I think this is a good system," says Baird Professor of History Richard Pipes, whose packed Core class on Russia was forced to change rooms this semester. "It's an old tradition and institution."

"It's just part of life," Pipes says. "From experience I sort of assume roughly one third who show up at the first or second lecture will not enroll."

But according to officers at the Coop and the sourcebook office, even limited enrollments do not keep the books from selling out.

"A major headache is when there's a lottery," Witt says. "If there's going to be a lottery and a professor assigns something at the beginning of class, the students buy source-books and end up getting lotteried out."

"Then we have to make a decision whether to refund their money," Witt continues. "Basically we have to throw [returned sourcebooks] away."

Workers at the Coop textbook department are also frustrated by post shopping period returns.

"Those students who do shop a course and later decide to drop the course generally purchase a textbook or textbooks," Powell says. "Students coming by later on look for the textbook and it might not be there, so we reorder the book."

"All of a sudden we have the reorder in, and we have the returned book," Powell says. "What we end up doing is a lot of reordering books even though we then get returns later on."

Both Witt and Powell say shopping period considerably limits their profits.

"Basically, if our textbook department were separate from the Coop, it would at best break even," Powell says. "Absolutely, without shopping period it would be more profitable."

Witt says that the sourcebook office actually loses money every semester.

"If we've printed 500 sourcebooks and only 200 students take the class, we end up losing thousands of dollars because we've had to pay to have them printed," Witt says.

"Each year there are four or five classes that are significantly lower, and at least one that is several hundred students lower," he says. "We end up having to recycle around 20 boxes of books every year. The main reason for that recycling is shopping period."

The Bright Side

For students and professors, though, the chaos created by shopping period ends the day study cards are due, when students are able to make informed decisions about their courses.

"I think students get much more out of personal contact with a professor in a classroom than an abstract summary out of a course catalog," says Pipes. "It only goes on for two or three lectures."

Despite the preliminary discussion about preregistration by the Faculty Council last spring, professors seem to be willing to continue xeroxing extra syllabi, even if it means not knowing how many teaching fellows to hire.

"I think it's a wonderful institution," Oettinger says. "It creates a bit of chaos, but it's a wonderful tradeoff for free marketplace so students can see what they're getting before buying into it."

"I think it's a good thing for students to have choice," Layzer says. "I think the option is important enough that we can put up with a bit of chaos for the first couple of days."

Those faculty members who experienced shopping period themselves as undergraduates are particularly supportive of the institution.

"As an ex-[Harvard] student, I could hardly be against shopping period," Lewis says. "I don't think there is really any way for an incoming freshman to know for sure whether she belongs in Math 25 and will enjoy it except to go to the first couple of classes and try to do the first problem set."

The vast majority of undergraduates interviewed were against eliminating shopping period.

"Eliminating it is a very poor idea," says Alex M. Fung '98. "I'm undecided on many courses at the beginning of the week. If I hadn't shopped, I would have actually chosen two classes I didn't enjoy very much."

"With the amount of money I pay for tuition, I think student choice is very important," Fung says.

"It's really helpful to have the opportunity to investigate some of the classes and see how the professor runs his lecture," says Amy L. Mecklenburg '98.

"It's a hard way to go into the semester. In one of my classes there was one hundred pages of reading, but I couldn't get the sourcebook," she adds. "But it's worth it because it gets rid of all the paperwork, and add-drop forms, there would otherwise be."

Students emphasize that they use shopping period mainly to weed out classes they dislike or trim their lists of classes down to four, rather than to find classes they hadn't considered based on their descriptions in the course catalogue.

"I really like shopping period because it lets you find out which classes are boring," says Steven R. Hill '98. "I also think the lectures the professors give are the most inspirational."

"I think shopping period is something unique that a lot of my friends don't have," says Shane C. Mangrum '97. "My list Monday included six classes. I shopped two classes that I had to choose between."

Some students say they came to Harvard this semester knowing only one class they were sure they would take.

"I just knew I was going to take a government sophomore tutorial," Hill says.

And as their choices shifted, most students say the hassle of not being able to buy or to find sourcebooks until the second or third week of classes is not too troubling.

Others say they find shopping particularly useful for choosing Core courses.

"Shopping is a useful tool, since the courses are forced upon you," one Eliot junior says. "Packed classes aren't really a big deal, and running out of books is not really a problem."

Despite this praise for shopping period, a handful of students say they do not shop classes.

"I've never shopped classes," Andy J. Liu '96 says. "I take classes for the subject matter, which I can tell pretty well by the course descriptions."

Liu says that he doesn't mind the present system, however.

"I've never been inconvenienced by shopping period," he says.Shop 'til You Drop Students want to buy sourcebooks, which often sell out during shopping period.