By Jasmine King
Writer

The most stressful part of the end of the semester isn’t finals anymore, it is course scheduling. When speaking to a variety of students on campus, the consensus is that course scheduling is borderline painful. The system is completely ridiculous and causes students unnecessary stress as they try to get into all of the classes that they want for the next semester.

As the system runs currently, seniority rules. This is fine because upperclassmen have been here the longest, so they deserve to pick the classes for their last semesters first and get everything that they want to take. My biggest problem with the process is with the way in which students within a class year are assigned to pick courses: in groups based on last name.  So not only does seniority rule; you have to be lucky enough to have the right last name to have the first spot of picking.

I understand that the last name process is varied throughout the years at the University so that eventually everyone will get a turn to go first. But if a senior chooses her classes last, there is no guarantee that she will get the classes that she wants to take in her final semester at the University. I think that the school should make it so that everyone within a class year (first-years, sophomores, juniors and seniors) should pick their classes all at the same time. This would make it a lot fairer for the students involved and then more students would have a better chance to get the classes that they want. Since all of the students in the group would pick at the same time, it also would be a lot quicker for the Registrar’s Office because the University could have all of the course selection process done in two days instead of making it a week-long process.

As a first-year who picked her classes in the very last spot, I can attest to the fact that this system is very inefficient.  If the system would run the way that I explained, then there would be less “dropping and adding” of courses by students in the fall. All in all, this would be a better system to run for the University. It would be a lot more efficient, less time consuming and less stressful for everyone involved.