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For years, transfer students arriving at Brown have complained heartily about the University's lack of guidance for transfers during the spring shopping period, and this January proved no exception. Shopping period was especially confusing for Amanda Glass '09, a transfer student from the University of California in Los Angeles.
Glass, who said she transferred to Brown in search of "a more, like, rigorous academic program," was initially looking forward to shopping period with great anticipation.
"All my friends in LA thought it sounded like such a great idea," she said. "You come back after Christmas and the bargains are just like to-die-for! Plus you can get a jump on spring fashions. What better way to start the semester?"
On the first day of shopping period, while her peers crowded into Salomon Hall and Barus & Holley, Glass headed straight for the Providence Place Mall. Much to her dismay, she soon found that her new classmates failed to share her zeal for winter savings.
"I was like, O-M-G, what is this!? Nobody wanted to go to the mall with me," Glass recalled. "Everybody was, like, going to classes all day wearing these faded flannel shirts and gray skinny jeans. It was way drab. I felt like Elle in the first part of Legally Blonde when she gets to Harvard before she totally hooks up with Luke Wilson. So sad."
Indeed, adding to Glass's frustrations is her lack of connection with her fellow students. Interactions with her roommate, Emma Parkinson '09, have been awkward at best. Parkinson described one such conversation to the Noser:
"I was trying to reach out to her since she's new here, so I asked what she shopped that day. When she said rhinestone flip-flops, I mean. I didn't really know what to make of that."
Though Glass was disappointed to learn that shopping period refers solely to the practice of picking out classes, she announced her intentions to adapt to this new information.
"I mean, whatever. Shopping City Politics is probably just as fun as shopping for Marc Jacobs tube tops," she said, a tear gleaming in her eye. "I just thought Brown was supposed to be the most fashionable school in the Ivy League."
