Regsitration Woes

On top of the stress of finals, the University of Michigan has decided that registration week should go on during all of our studying.  Now if you have never registered, you would not understand how ridiculously stressful registration can be.  It’s all about your registration date.  The earlier your date the less problems you have. 

Registration groups are determined by graduating class.  Seniors register first, then juniors, then sophomores, and finally freshman.  This is fair and makes logical sense because as you go down the line from seniors to freshman, the requirements are different, and seniors should obviously take priority.  Within each year, there are a few dates where that year registers.  Every fifteen minutes for about three days there is a group that registers.  And, logically, as more and more people register, more and more classes fill up. 

Before registration, you need to decide which classes you want to take and pick certain times so your schedule works.  Most big classes have one large lecture and then many different times for discussions.  And other classes are only offered at one specific time.  Therefore, in order to take what you want to take, you better pray that all the times work well with one another.  And if they don’t, then you have to choose which class is more important to you.  Also, if there are numerous sections of a class being taught by different professors, there will naturally be one professor, which students wish to take over another. 

In addition to taking classes for enjoyment, there are certain requirements that students need to fulfill depending on their school, program, or major.  Those applying to the Business school have to take calculus and economics.  Those in a learning community need to enroll in a class for their learning community.  Those in the Honors Program need 50% of their classes to be honors classes.  Those applying to a specific major need to enroll in specific courses.  And you get the idea. 

Now, if a particular class that you wanted or needed to take fills up, then you have to rearrange your schedule and find completely different sections of the same class or entirely new classes to enroll in.  If your lucky, the class will be offered at a different time, if your unlucky this different time will overlap with a different course you wanted to take.  Thus, creating a schedule that is correctly organized is no easy feat.  If you add into the equation your registration date, things get even more messy. 

As registration groups register in their allotted times, spaces in courses fill up and close quickly.  If your class is a requirement, chances are the course at the time that works for you with the professor you want will fill up within the first day of registration.  Meaning you have to reconfigure your entire schedule.  Planning out a schedule takes a painfully long time, but you have to do it in order to be prepared for your registration date. 

My registration date was, of course, on the last date.  As I checked my backpack on Wolverine Access, I cried a little everyday as I saw that the classes I wanted to take filled up and their waiting lists reached ridiculous lengths of well over 100 people.  Every night I had to find new courses to take and make a new schedule hoping that this time it would work out.  And every day up until December 14^th my classes would fill and I would have to make yet another new schedule. 

Part of the reason I wanted to come to the University of Michigan was that there were so many interesting classes.  But what they don’t tell you on your tours is that you might never get to take any of them.  In an idea world, the school would hire more professors to teach classes or require more sections of a class to be taught.  But lets be honest here, that will probably never happen.  So does anyone have a better idea on what to do when the class you want to take is full?