Event Kicks Off Advising Fortnight

Curious freshmen travelled from table to table in a packed Annenberg Hall picking up pamphlets and asking questions at last night’s kick-off of the Advising Fortnight, a two-week-long event hosted by the Advising Programs Office to help undergraduates choose their concentration.

The freshmen make up the first class to benefit from the recent introduction of secondary fields and the delay in concentration choice deadlines.

Assistant Dean of the College Stephanie H. Kenen manned a table solely devoted to providing information about joint concentrations and secondary fields.

“Some students feel like they have to do a secondary field because we’ve been talking so much about it,” she said. “But I urge them to ask questions early and often about whether this is a combination that would work.”

Emily R. Neill, the undergraduate program administrator for the Economics Department, said that her department is advocating secondary fields as an alternative for would-be joint concentrators.

“Joint theses with economics are difficult,” she said.

Neill added that another change, the delay in concentration choice deadline, poses a problem for her department.

“It is not great for us because we have such heavy course requirements and they are on a time-pegged basis,” she said, pointing to the importance of taking the full-year Social Analysis 10 as a sophomore economics concentrator.

Adora I. Mora ’10 agreed that the change might not always be beneficial.

“A lot of these departments haven’t adapted their sequence of courses to the delay in concentration choice,” she said.

But others were relieved by the College’s revised timetable.

“I’ve changed my mind since being here about the classes I’m going to take, so I think it’s good they delayed the choice,” said David I. Fulton-Howard ’08-’10.

Field representatives did all they could to provide information and spark interest. The English Department handed out free copies of Shakespearean works, while members of the History Department sported matching blue and gray shirts.

Several freshmen, though, were less concerned with choosing a concentration than taking advantage of the selection of fruit and cheese provided for the event as they sat on the floors of a table-less Annenberg with heaping plates.

“I already basically know what I want to do for my concentration, so it’s mostly annoying that I don’t have anywhere to sit,” said Fulton-Howard.

—Staff writer Alexandra Hiatt can be reached at ahiatt@fas.harvard.edu.