FIRST-YEAR SPRING: Out of the Crib

A baby's first steps are tentative and unsure. The infant takes his time, feeling the weight of his body on top of his wobbly legs and the layout of the land before him.

A first-year student's fall semester is much the same. It is spent growing accustomed to college academics and life away from home.

Now, at the beginning of their second semester, first-year students are hitting their stride, just in time to make a series of decisions that will define the rest of their Harvard experience. With blocking groups and randomization, they will move out of the Yard. With concentration decisions, they will move into a department.

Celeste L. Ng '02 says she has settled into life at Harvard with relatively little pain.

"I feel much more at home and at ease this semester now that I know where to go and know who to ask when I have questions," Ng said.

Many of these questions second semester will be directed toward upperclass students and advisers in academic departments. The concentration first-year students choose in the spring will place most of them in intensive tutorials and introductory courses during their sophomore fall.

"I talked to the departments I was thinking of concentrating in," says Nicole C. Ruiz '02.

If first-year students opt for advanced standing, many departments require them to take tutorials this spring. While advanced standing allows students to graduate early or take time off, it also means choosing a concentration after a mere semester.

"Students are deciding on that right now," says Wigglesworth proctor Bruce Richman, adding that all first-year students will face the concentration decision later in the spring.

"It is important for students to take introductory courses in departments that they are thinking about for their concentration, but also to realize that [concentrations are] not something that is fixed," Richman says.

Beyond academics, first-year students must decide second-semester which friends will make the blocking group cut.

"Blocking can be very exciting but also very difficult," Richman says.

Most first-year students, according to Ruiz, have already begun thinking about their blocking groups even though the forms are not due until March. The up-to-16 people in the blocking groups will move to a House together.

"I think most people have started discussing it a little bit," she says.