Registration frustrations

By Annalise Knudson | Posted on November 19, 2015

By the time the middle of the semester rolls around, students realize that registration is almost upon them. That means visiting their advisor for help, looking through guide sheets for their intended or declared major, and getting the hold lifted off their account to be able to register.

This is one of the most anxious times of the semester for some students, especially if a student is nearing graduation or there are only a few sections for a class that you need to take for the upcoming semester.

Waiting to register is stressful, especially when the website used for registering isn’t working properly. Watching the numbers become lower and lower with each minute that passes was nerve wracking for me to see, especially when I was qualified to register but couldn’t register due to technical difficulties.

I wasn’t the only student who had this problem when trying to register for next Spring 2016 semester classes on Oct. 27. I had priority registration so I knew that this wasn’t the reason I couldn’t register.

When I woke up the morning I could register, it was 6:30 a.m. and I realized that I slept through midnight, the time I can register officially. I hurriedly grabbed my laptop, signed into the website, and tried to register for my previously selected courses I chose the week before.

I clicked register and waited with my fingers crossed for it to go through. But then nothing happened. I felt a wave of disappointment and I felt my heartbeat racing faster. Why wasn’t it working?

I clicked refresh and tried again and again and nothing happened. It brought me back to the same page to register. I tried to do each class individually and was able to register for only a few classes. But I needed to register for other important classes. Those classes either had only one section, or were needed for me to graduate in May 2016.

I started to panick. I packed my things up and headed to school too early for any offices to be open and tried again on the computers on campus. I kept receiving the same refreshed page with my classes still not registered.

Then I realized that my best bet was to head to the Registrar’s office. I waited on line and talked to other students with the same problems as me. I registered for my classes and my anxiety lessened.

An email was sent out to all students further into the evening that they were fixing the site due to problems. It didn’t stop students from freaking out all day and night over registration.

For some people, registration is not a big deal and some students do not register until just before classes start. But some other students, registration issues can pose a problem. Students who work part-time, full-time, or multiple jobs need to fit their school schedules to their job schedules to be able to pay for bills and school.

Going to a commuter school, a semester’s schedule impacts students of any major because of other priorities that they need to adhere to whether it is job obligations or family obligations and so on.

This is not intended to be against the system used for registration, because the problem was resolved during late afternoon and evening, just in time for the rest of the students on the schedule to register in the coming days.

Registering for classes is always a stressful time for me and I’m sure that I’m not the only one who is stressed when registering. But once classes are registered for and the new semester starts, we get to prepare for the next semester’s anxious registration process all over again.