It’s that time of year, you can almost feel it in the air. The hustle, the bustle, the last-minute checklists, the stress.
Yes, it seems like just yesterday you were working down your list, checking you had everything taken care of, but it’s November, and class registration is upon us once again.
As a matter of full disclosure, I am probably the last person who should be advising any sort of promptness in class registration.
Like many of my undergrad colleagues, I’ve been known to drag my feet till the last minute – even past that on some occasions – not signing up for class until the day before, or even after the semester had officially begun.
I’ve tried to rationalize this in the past – I tell myself I’m too busy, or I want to sit in on a class and get a look at a syllabus before I commit for an entire semester worth of work – but in the end, I think i might just be prone to truly chronic levels of procrastination, (this is only slightly in jest, as I fully expect to one day die from something that I ‘just never have time’ to have looked at).
I never thought this sort of slacking could really hurt anyone but myself, but when inquiring with faculty about this year’s earlier class-registration period, I learned that registering for classes in a timely fashion can mean the difference between weather a course even ends up being taught.
If when approaching the start of a new semester, registration for a class is lower than expected, the class – or sections of it – might end up getting cut.
In a letter distributed during an English class, the head of advising for the department warned that “in this difficult economic climate, classes that are not full will be cancelled,” warning that students not “assume that you can wait until open registration to enroll.”
Advising offers the following checklist for students to go through before they report for their advising session:
- Make an appointment with your advisor
- Get a copy of your department’s course guide
- Use the Course Search function on Mainestreet to create a Wish List
- Print out your Progress Report
- Print out your current class schedule
- Print out your Wish List
- Make a list of any questions you have for you advisor