Registration frustration

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Illustration by: Mikala Piller | Cartoonist

Registration for the spring term of classes has already begun for some, and like every registration period, it is a bloodbath.

There are no friends when it comes to registration; there are only competitors for the coveted seat in the class with the highest rated professor on ratemyprofessor.com.

The perfect class times are also up for grabs, but only for those who painstakingly await the hour when the floodgates open and students are allowed to enter their previously decided upon CRN course numbers.

It’s such a desperate process simply because of what’s at stake. Not only are students forfeiting hundreds of dollars per credit hour, they’re also committing hundreds of hours over the span of the coming fifteen week semester to a select group of classes that they may or may not get into.

That helps to explain why I unblinkingly stared down the clock at 10:29 a.m. Monday while on my laptop. I squatted in the Arts and Science Commons lobby, just daring the clock to roll over to the next minute so that I could frantically type in my desired courses before they filled up and I was added to the dreaded purgatory that is a course waitlist.

I was fortunate enough to get into all of the classes that I was hoping to, but the mounting feeling of extreme anxiety leading up to the moment of registration can be a toxic amount of stress for students to deal with.

Each student is issued an adviser to help guide him or her through the tumultuous and stressful path to graduation. Yet with multiple students to oversee for every adviser, it must be difficult to prioritize individual students, especially during registration season when everyone is clamoring for their attention.

Nevertheless, each student has a hold placed on his or her account, which forbids the adding or dropping of classes until that student seeks out his or her adviser for a meeting. How much clarification and relief can come from this brief melding of minds may leave a bit to be desired.

For as much as students are spending on tuition, it shouldn’t be such a struggle to get into the classes that are necessary to graduate. In an ideal world, such stiff contention wouldn’t be necessary thanks to plenty of options at varying times throughout the day, but unfortunately that world cannot reasonably exist.

Therefore, registration will go on as a Hunger Games style showdown, where there are no winners. All that we can hope for is that the odds be ever in our favor.