Gems are not a new concept. In fact, they were called “guts” when Dean of Freshmen Thomas A. Dingman ’67 was an undergraduate at the College.

“There were courses that were notoriously forgiving,” recalled Dingman. “There were names for them: ‘Rocks for Jocks’ was a natural science course in the Gen Ed curriculum and Fine Arts 13, an introductory art course, was referred to affectionately as ‘Darkness at Noon,’” he said, adding that it was nicknamed for all of the students who fell asleep during its lunchtime lecture.

Dean of Undergraduate Education Jay M. Harris wrote in an email that he was “intrigued,” but not surprised that students seek out less difficult academic opportunities.

“I realize that every generation of college students thinks history begins with them, but, really, classes students identify as easy have been around a long time, at Harvard and everywhere else,” Harris wrote. “There have always been and will always be students who seek out courses they think are easier—not always correctly, I might add.”

Dingman agreed that judging a class by its perceived academic rigor is not the best way to pick classes.

“If they are assembling these lists, the effort is misguided,” he said. “It doesn’t take into account what a student is interested in.”

PANNING FOR GOLD

Nevertheless, new technologies and increased virtual communication between students has in many ways made it easier to mine for gems.

According to an athlete with a close connection to a list of “gems” circulated early this term, it was put together “strictly by looking at the Q Guide.”

“I don’t think people use [the Q Guide] as much as they should,” he said. He noted that the difficulty of a course should be evaluated within the broader context of a student’s full schedule—an easy class can be an important complement to an otherwise difficult course load.

In addition to taking account of emailed course lists that are forwarded from one student group to another, many undergraduates use the Q Guide to tailor their shopping lists and final schedule. Although students cannot filter the official Q Guide by difficulty level, resources like “Harvard Courses,” a CS50 course selection tool, can sort classes by any of the Q Guide parameters, including difficulty.

Dingman cautioned against an overreliance on past Q Guide data.

“I’ve been aware of faculty changing what they are requiring as a result [of Q Guide feedback],” Dingman said.

While many professors are aware of their course’s reputation, they do not always agree with student assessment of rigor.

Anthropology 1190: “Encountering the Conquistadors” was last taught in the spring of 2009 but ended up on a recent list of easy classes when the course was offered again this term—a point of confusion for its instructor, Matthew J. Liebmann. Liebmann, an associate professor in anthropology, said that an easy class would allow a student to produce little work and still earn a good grade, a pattern he said is inconsistent with Anthropology 1190’s grading policies.