When the registration process began in mid-November, many Jumbos eagerly snatched up spots in the physical education courses offered in the spring, which include golf, squash, skiing and snowboarding.
Some students signed up with the intention of getting buff - but others just needed another half-credit course. Regardless of the initial inspiration for registration, though, many find such academics-free classes beneficial for a variety of reasons.
According to yogalates (a combination of yoga and pilates) instructor and swim coach Nancy Bigelow, physical education classes are essential to the mental and physical health of university students.
"At many universities until the mid-1970s, physical education was a requirement," Bigelow said. "Mind, body and spirit is and was an important concept in a liberal arts education."
But for senior Laura Manoogian, the most important reason for taking physical education classes is less holistic: they are "an incentive to go to the gym."
"When I was taking yogalates, I would work out before class," she said. "Taking the gym classes also breaks up my gym routine because just going to the gym five days a week gets boring."
In the process of helping students get into shape, physical education classes can also provide an opportunity for experienced fitness fans to learn new positions or moves - and to correct old ones.
Senior Jessica Cohen says that her advanced aerobics class was helpful because she was able to "learn new moves and methods of teaching" for the Tufts Student Resources aerobics class she leads.
Senior Megan Curtis-Murphy agreed that, as a seasoned rock climber, the biggest benefit of her rock-climbing class was learning different and better moves.
"For our rock climbing class we went indoor rock climbing at Metrorock, where we had a little bit of instruction but mostly free climbing," she said. "Mostly you were just there working on your own skills, but it was definitely helpful to have teachers there telling you what moves to make."
"You also got to climb with different people, and seeing how different people climb might improve your own climbing," Curtis-Murphy added. "You could really see improvements from week to week."
Although physical education courses can improve the abilities of a student experienced in activities such as yoga and rock climbing, the courses can occasionally be overly basic for someone who has taken a class in the past.
"I'm obsessed with my step aerobics class because I feel like I'm in an 80s Jazzercise video," Manoogian said. "But I did not enjoy the yogalates class because I have taken yoga in the past and I am a dancer. I felt like the classes were geared more towards conditioning for athletes."
Besides a good workout, classes come with a half-credit - and sometimes, even a letter grade, in the case of Cohen's advanced step aerobics class.
"[Although] I definitely could have done without the credit, it doesn't hurt to get an A," Cohen said.
Although Manoogian has never taken a physical education course that was not pass/fail, she said that she would be much more likely to take a course if it were likely to positively affect her GPA.
This same logic led her to take ballet for four semesters: "I took it because I loved ballet," she said. "But it also really helped my GPA."
Along with raising a student's GPA, physical education classes may even enhance his or her studying abilities in other classes. "Taking physical education classes expands and refreshes the mind, works the body and lifts one's spirits," Bigelow said.
"How many times do you hear people say that they can concentrate more and study better if their body is in good shape? I think it is an important outlet to make studying more productive."
