Intern Blog

By: Stefanie Wheeler
FNCU Reporter/Editor

Semester after semester we wake up at 6:55a.m on registration day, enter class codes online (which we've spent hours selectively picking to ensure the best schedule possible), and wait extremely impatiently to hit the “register” button as the clock strikes 7.  Semester after semester at least one of our classes is closed by 7:01 causing us extreme bitterness to the person who “stole” our seat.  We always complain that our schedules aren't ideal and that the professors we ended up with have horrible ratings on ratemyprofessor.com.  We write pathetic e-mails to deans and professors begging them to fit us into that one class, because our particular situation is more important than one of our peers' who want an exception made just as badly as we do.  When the passive aggressive e-mails don't work, we make appointments with deans and chairs of departments and march into their offices to state our cases hoping they are feeling nice that day.  It's very unpredictable territory.  Sometimes we go in angry thinking a scare tactic will work best.  Sometimes we use tears to evoke sympathy.   And sometimes we rattle off our entire resumes to prove that we're good students and that it's simply not our fault that we were closed out of a class.  “I have a 3.7 GPA, a great internship, and I'm involved in three clubs on campus, I need this class.”  It's not really a logical argument, but we use it.  We're college kids, we'll try anything. 

This registration nightmare happened to me just this week as I tried registering for my final semester of my college career. Unluckily for me, I woke up at 6:55am to an obnoxious hold on my account. I couldn't register. How perfect.  Two classes that I need to graduate were closed out within hours of registration. I've tried all the usual tactics, except for crying, and I've had zero luck thus far.  Maybe the older I get the worse I am at getting my way. Or maybe administration is just getting meaner and more unsympathetic.  Either way, I've done some thinking. Why are we so emotionally invested in certain classes that we MUST take them? Why do we insist on trying to take our favorite professors every semester?  Why do we complain every semester about everything?  Why is homework the biggest burden ever? Isn't that what we signed up for?  This all seems so petty in retrospect. So unnecessarily stressful. 

Next time,  not that there really is one since I'm graduating next semester, but let's pretend there was, I'm going to stop waking up at the crack of dawn, stop stressing about what section of a class I get into, and start taking whatever's left over after the early morning registration hysteria.  I'll make the best out of whatever classes I get. I'll probably be in the classes with all of the other slackers who didn't wake up for registration partly because they didn't care, but mostly because they didn't even know when registration was. Hey, maybe then I'll finally be the smartest kid in class. Why didn't I come up with this sooner?