Harvard speak

Random:Unplanned or unnatural happening: I ran into my first-grade teacher in the Square. It was so random.

Randomized:1. Formerly used to describe what happens when your first four house choices were already filled and you were randomly placed into a less popular house. (See Quadded.) 2. What will happen to every incoming first-year, beginning with the class of '99, thanks to the final decision of former dean of the College L. Fred Jewett '57.

Reading Period:1. Two weeks to read a semester's worth of text and write three 30-page papers. 2. When the rest of the campus goes skiing.

Sections:1. Weekly meetings with graduate students of varying teaching abilities and intelligence (see TF). 2. Meant to complement courses taught by big-name professors too busy to teach the important details that will appear on the final.

Shopping Period:1. The first week of the semester. 2. The only time all semester you'll be excited about your courses.

Sick-Out: What to do when you are totally unprepared for an exam (see bag).

T.F.:1. Teaching Fellow. 2. Person (possibly an alien life form) in control of your academic fate.

Undergraduate Council:1. Student council for college kids (see Gov Jock). 2. Organization that would go bankrupt from consistently sponsoring rock concerts that bomb if it weren't for the $20 "contribution" you pay them in your term bill. 3. Place where scandals happen. 4. People who think they have power when they really don't..

UHS: 1. University Health Services. 2. Not a good place to go when you're healthy. 3. Not a good place to go when you're sick. 4. And you only hear about them after a suicide.

Widener Library: 1. Mammoth Library built in memory of a Titanic drowning victim. 2. Where students go to pore over books and sometimes, each other.

Winthrop House:Harvard High 02138.

Yale: 1. Broke. 2. New Haven lock factory. 3. Where you would have gone if you didn't get into Harvard.