Hundreds flocked into Science Center C during shopping period for the first lecture of Science A-39: "Time," a Core course offered for the first time this year. Attracted by a seemingly light workload, many non-science concentrators registered for the course, only to find now, halfway through the semester, that Science A-39 is taking up much more time than they imagined.

"They need to reexamine the difficulty or the speed, perhaps, that they go through the material. Since it is the first time that it is being offered, they should really listen to what the students have to say about it," Katherine O'Neil '01, a student in Time, said.

Teaching fellows for the course, however, are divided.

"If you have not had physics, there is definitely a fair amount of catching up to do at the beginning of the course," Geoffrey Dixon, a TF for the course, said.

But Alexia E. Schulz, head TF for the course, defended its structure and said Time is "absolutely targeted toward the general student population."

"It's a self-contained course; there are no prerequisites," she added.

It has been a common phenomenon in the history of the Core: students register for core courses expecting guts, only to be confounded by hundreds of pages of reading, multiple problem sets and unexpectedly complicated theories each week. But this year, the problem seems endemic. Once passable courses like Literature & Arts B-51: "First Nights" are toughening their standards.

Francis Chen '00, who took First Nights last fall, said that the teaching staff has assigned more work over the past two years.

"It just seems like there are more written assignments," Chen said. "My friends who are taking it now have more restrictions on the papers they have to write. When the class becomes too much of a burden on people, it's not as enjoyable."

Chen said the increased stringency of First Nights may reflect and effort to strengthen all courses on the part of the Core Committee.

But teaching fellows for the courses said the Core has always aimed to challenge students within the program, and that this year is no exception.

"Some people think [the Core] should be [easier], but I don't know that that is a goal of the Core necessarily," said Jane K. Cramer, a teaching assistant for Historical Studies A-51: "Modern World Economy."

"It's pretty challenging," Cramer said of the course, admitting that already, "Some of the students complained."

"The thing that's challenging about this course is the reading load," she said. "We stress to them to prioritize reading...if they had those skills they could handle it."

But students' reading skills may not be at fault. The difficulty level of the course, in student's eyes, seems to be its demands in relation to its presentation during shopping period. Cramer said students have questioned the course's difficulty not in comparison to other History courses, but to those within the Core itself.