Roommate John M. Cosgrove Jr. ’07 said he had met a flood of students leaving the ornate hall at noon as the previous class adjourned.

“It was like controlled chaos,” he said with a laugh. “Nobody was violent or anything.”

Evan R. Calvert ’07, another Canaday C-11 resident who said his average class in high school had 20 to 25 students, appreciated the auditorium’s architecture.

“I couldn’t believe the classroom when I walked into it,” he said.

But Calvert expressed anxiety about the size of this and other classes.

“I think that’s going to be my biggest shock—not having so much one-on-one contact with my professors,” he said.

By contrast, Dylan P. Reese ’07—the hockey defenseman recently drafted by the New York Rangers—said that with a nearly-full slate of seminar-style courses ahead this term, he welcomed Ec 10’s larger scale.

“That’ll be good also to have some variety,” he said. “I love that environment—Sanders Theatre’s a great, old-time place to learn.”

Jamila R. Martin ’07, a friend of Richardson’s, said she, too, had enjoyed the impersonal approach of the introductory economics class.

“I like the idea of just being able to sit there,” she said. “I love the idea of lectures where you can sit there and take notes and just have it given to you.”

While Richardson made the most of shopping period’s free-form nature yesterday, visiting some courses that he had no definite plans to enroll in, one of his roommates avoided such haphazard scheduling.

“I don’t think I went through the same hectic experience as other people did,” Calvert said, explaining that he had armed himself with a Courses of Instruction book and more or less settled on his fall courses the night before. “I could pay attention in the classes and not be worrying about which ones I was going to go to in 30 seconds.”

Reese, on the other hand, lauded shopping period’s flexibility and said he didn’t think it had added too much stress to his life.

“I think it was a really calm experience,” he said. “Even sitting in a one-hour class or a half-hour class can really tell you a lot about what the class is going to be like.”

—Staff writer Simon W. Vozick-Levinson can be reached at vozick@fas.harvard.edu.