Hola todos! (Hello, everybody!)
Not too long ago, I received an email from my Spanish adviser in the form of PowerPoint that said something along the lines of: “Class registration is right around the corner!! Schedule an appointment with me so you won’t end up like this guy!!” (There was a picture of a man that was jumping around yelling…I think it’s really a picture of a film director that was yelling “ACTION!” or something, but we’ll pretend like it’s a student shouting in anguish due to procrastination.) And I thought to myself, “Yeeessss….I love this part.” Call me a weirdo, but I really get a kick out of scheduling my classes. Anyway, I figure since it’s about that time, I ought to make a blog about it. Here are some pointers when it comes to scheduling classes in college.
1. Don’t assume that your eligible day to register is the same as the official registration date.
Like I said, I enjoy scheduling my classes, so last semester I had my schedule planned out and set up in my “enrollment shopping cart” (get it?) even before the official registration date. However…I am but a puny sophomore, therefore I don’t get to register for my classes until a week or two after the upper classmen. (Did I mention we have about 33,788 students at UTA?) The day I got on my MyMav (kind of like UTA’s Facebook for scheduling/financial aid/school announcements) to register, I found that I wasn’t going to be taking astronomy this semester. 
There’s no pointer for this one; there’s nothing you can really do about that, just…just….yeah.
2. If you depend on financial aid, sign up for at least 15 hours.
Chances are, you’ll be taking College Algebra with some old coot who teaches you approximately NOTHING the entire semester, and you don’t want to ruin your GPA, so let’s go ahead and just drop this class – OHH, wait. You only have 12 hours. Drop down to less than full-time, lose financial aid. If you start off with one more class worth 3 credits, you’ll have room for error.
3. Look at the dates!
When you’re getting ready to schedule your classes for the next semester: WATCH OUT FOR THE DATES! Maymesters, Wintermesters, and Summer Sessions are all mixed in with the next big semester’s classes on the catalog. Keep an eye out! Otherwise, you’ll find out 5 days after Christmas that the entire winter break, you’ve been enrolled in College Algebra and your final exam is the next day. It happens.
4. Avoid Overscheduling.
Just because you’ll only be taking classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays doesn’t mean you’ll be studying all day on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Especially if you have a job. No, you won’t have any spare time, and YES. You WILL become the most lazy person in the world. You’ll have 5 classes in one day. You’ll have class from 8am to 7pm. You’ll overlook the day of your birthday and have classes all day that day and won’t be able to do anything for your birthday besides convince your Spanish class to sing “Feliz cumpleaños” to you as a practice in pronunciation. Nope, not even free pancakes at IHop. Because that ends at 10pm and you bombed your last exam in Statistics, so you’ve got to do corrections so you can get those 5 extra points to get your grade up to an F+. *sigh*…
5. Schedule with friends.
Don’t try and fly solo, man! Get some of your friends to take a class with you. That way, when your birthday comes around, you can have someone to copy notes from. Trust me, it’s genius.
Is today my birthday? Yes. Did I have class all day? Yes, and still one more to go. Did all of the other things talked about in this entry happen to me? ….We won’t go there.
Razzle dazzle, man. Razzle dazzle.
-Alexz
