There are some days of the year that many people agree ought to be declared official holidays. The day after the Super Bowl, for instance, when you're still cleaning up from the mess left by the caveman friends you allowed to eat all your hot wings. Or Easter Monday, which is actually already a holiday in many countries around the world. Or Fergie's birthday, although I have a feeling I may be alone on that one.
The student body here at the University has such a day of its own. It's a day when people drop whatever they're doing to appreciate the more important pleasures of life. It's a day when people of all races and religions come together in near-unanimous observance. It's a day of revelry and excitement and optimism. It's the day the Course Offering Directory comes out.
I'm always awestruck by just how excited people get about this. Many are aware of when this day will come weeks before it happens. When it finally arrives, people on the street will bring the COD up in conversation in hushed and excited voices. Facebook status and away message references to the COD pile up in record numbers.
By the end of the day, just about everybody has his or her schedule already planned out pretty much to the last detail. It seems like there's a competition to see how early one can get this done -- "I planned MY next semester by noon," for example. It's truly remarkable to think that many of these people are the same ones who start their weekend on Wednesday. Just what the heck is everybody so excited about?
Admittedly, it probably shouldn't come as such a surprise that people get fired up about the new class offerings at a school renowned for its academics. As we love to remind people, we work hard as much as we play hard. So it makes sense that people care passionately about what's going to be on their class schedules.
Yet there's also got to be something more behind this phenomenon. At first glance, the COD is quite intimidating. It's full of numbers and mnemonics that range all the way up into the 900s. Class names are brutally abbreviated, as in "Soc Pol in 20th C." It's hard to know whether the class is on social policy in the 20th century or socialist policy in the 20th Cavalry regiment. It's sometimes even hard to know whether a particular class even exists. Most annoying of all is the COD's insistence on abbreviating Thursday with the letter "R," which makes absolutely no sense, unless you're Scooby-Doo and call it "Rursday."
What about this system is so appealing, then? Well, it's quite a privilege to have all the various academic possibilities available laid out for you to pick and choose. It really is like being a kid in a candy store -- where English is "Oh Henry," astronomy is a "Milky Way" and history is "Mounds" (think of burial mounds here). It's only at this time of life that we have the power to learn about and study whatever we want, and the COD helps us exercise that power.
There's also a point in every semester at which one simply becomes frustrated in some class. The material may have been fun at the start, but it turns out that 10 weeks of subject X was more than enough, and the home stretch looks like it will be long and strewn with papers to write. One begins anticipating the end of the class, much like one half of a couple contemplating a breakup. The COD helps with this. It promises a better tomorrow and the opportunity to make a fresh start. It's that hope that sustains us through a time of frantic study, finals and no college basketball.
Now, if the release of the COD is going to mark a new holiday, we have to figure out what to call it. "COD Day" is too simple and people who only read the name on paper might think we were celebrating a fish. I propose "Joy in Academics Day." People can call it "JIAD" if they want. Not that there isn't joy in academics all the time, but the COD really seems to rekindle that spark. And if there's ever a time when taking 20 credits sounds appealing, it's during Joy in Academics Day.
Please enjoy Joy in Academics Day responsibly. No matter how excited you are that your dream seminar is being offered, lighting a car on fire is never acceptable. And please contain yourself if ISIS or those rascally Echols Scholars somehow thwart you from getting any of the classes you actually wanted. There's no reason to be sad when there are only six months until the next JIAD. That should be enough to get you through.
Matt's column runs bi-weekly on Tuesdays. He can be reached at waring@cavalierdaily.com
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