For example, after some locals struggled to use her lantern that winter, she decided to take a CS class on user interfaces to improve her project design.

Other students, like Samuel J. Bakkila ’11-’12, say they take extra courses to help choose a concentration.

Bakkila, who is now pursuing a special concentration in public health, entered his sophomore spring undecided about what he wanted to study. He had been a prospective Social Studies concentrator in the fall, but returned to school eager to explore psychology. He enrolled in six courses that semester—including three psychology classes, a statistics class, a history of science class, and a research class in a moral cognition lab.

Beyond exploring a particular interest or concentration, many students say that they opt to take six courses for a simple reason: they love learning.

Archaeology concentrator Zenab R. Tavakoli ’12, who typically enrolls in four or five courses and audits between one and three more, says she enrolls in so many courses because she is “an enormous nerd.”

Tavakoli talks quickly, trying to cram as many words as she can into a single breath. With her busy schedule, she’s always in a bit of a rush.

“It’s kind of weird,” she muses. “A lot of people are on open lists, saying ‘what’s an easy class to take?’

‘And I’m like, ‘no, I don’t have time for these nothing classes. There are too many that I want to take.’ It’s the worst.”

GETTING THE GO AHEAD

The College makes it easy for students to take six classes—provided that their resident deans think they are up to the challenge. Undergraduates looking to take six courses in a single semester must contact their resident deans before study card day to get their schedule approved.

Students who want to take seven or more courses face a steeper challenge—they must petition the Administrative Board to get approval.

Resident dean of Adams House Sharon Howell receives about three or four requests each semester from students in the House looking to take six or more courses.

Howell says she considers students’ past academic performance when deciding whether to give them the go ahead.

“Usually, I, and the students other advisers, can talk him or her out of it if I really think it’s a bad idea,” she wrote in an email.

Christopher A. Hopper ’13, a premed linguistics concentrator, hoped to enroll in six classes at the start of the semester.