The air is crisp, the cider is spiced, and it is once again time for cab.brown.edu procrastination to be socially acceptable. Pre-registration for the spring semester opens on November 5th, which means that while I’m stressing about the classes I’m taking now, I have to actually think about my future and make decisions that will kind of influence my life.
But the beauty of this is that I get to spend time on CAB, the most beautifully designed website that Brown has to offer. And sometimes, it feels like I’m a part of a fake school that definitely has fake classes since there is no way fanfiction can be a real-life class, right?
Would you be able to tell real college classes apart from fake ones? Here, give it a shot. Below is a quick list of “real” or “fake” classes for the Spring 2020 semester. (Scroll to the bottom to see which ones are real and which ones are fake, and their corresponding CAB entries.)
1. “Making a List”
Dismantle Buzzfeed articles for credit.
A comparative literature class about the list in literature, from the Homeric epic to listicles like this one.
2. “Where Do They Come From, Where Do They Go“
The human body is least prepared for germs they haven’t seen before. Ebola did come from fruit bats, after all.
This biology class explores where these pathogens come from, where they go, and how they affect the human body in the meanwhile.
3. “One True Pairing: The Courtship Plot from Jane Austen to Jane the Virgin“
My OTPs are Jane Villanueva/Rafael Solano and Liz/Darcy. I ship it so hard.
That’s it. That’s the class.
4. “Talking Dogs and Thinking Vegetables“
Carrots that silently scream every time you chomp into one. Squirrels that judge you through your window as you hibernate more than they do. Can you ever view the world in the same way ever again? Maybe you’re just not listening hard enough to the anguish of the world.
This is an environmental history class that approaches non-human actors as agents in their own right, shifting the focus from humans to non-human actors when evaluating and formulating historical narratives.
5. “Why Don’t We Fall In Love?“
Single and trying to figure out why? Not single and trying to figure out why? Want someone to ask you this question, possibly over some tea? How romantic! What even is romantic anyway?
This is a literary arts class on the intersection of the erotic and poetry, through the ups and lows of human emotion.
6. “Small is Fine”
The portrayal of “small” in mass media today, in the toy, mobile, cute, viral, indie, trashy, pirated, tossable-in-the-dumpster-and-no-one-will-notice kind of things.
A Modern Culture and Media (MCM) class, if that was not obvious.
7. “Puff the Magic Dragon: Tobacco, Disease and the Industry“
What is the difference between smoking cigarettes, shisha, or juuling? Is there one? What is the connection between smoking, disease, and death and why is nicotine so gosh darn addicting for people? And is Puff the Magic Dragon (a song that I had to sing in first grade) really a song about smoking?
All this and more from this public health class.
8. “Big Brain Energy“
Turns out if we give BIG ENERGY to brains, we can see what it looks like and even target irregularities within the brain, allowing small brains to overcome disease to reach their full potential as BIG BRAINS.
This medical physics class delves into the application of concepts and methods of physics to diagnosis and treatment of human disease.
All of these are based on real classes. Happy shopping, everyone!
