Gird Your Loins!
We roll at 12:30 in Haas F295, the 300 seat Arthur Andersen Auditorium. However, we are only slotted for 240 students in eight discussion sections of 30--budget cuts, you know.
At 12:37 I stand up. I give my "this is an economics course; you have to do arithmetic" spiel; I give my "this is a history course; you have to read a lot" spiel; I give my "this is Berkeley, the finest public university in the world--expect to work hard (but also expect a moderately high grade curve)" spiel".
And one of two things will happen:
There is a rush for the door, and we end up with a class of 200.
Because the university has cut back materially on undergraduate course offerings this fall, and because this course fulfills requirements for Economics, Political Economy, and Global Poverty, we wind up with 330 people wanting to take the course--and I spend the next week weeping and whimpering and yelling as we try to staff up and clear the wait list.
At the moment we have 240 students enrolled, and 62 on the wait list...
