Ah the end of the semester. You’re making plans for Thanksgiving dinner, returning textbooks to the bookstore and preparing your Spotify Christmas playlist. After a semester’s worth of stress, you look forward to unwinding.
There’s just one problem; you’re still waitlisted for classes.
The horror of not knowing where you’ll be next semester and wondering how on Earth you’ll graduate on time without any writing intensives is consuming your thoughts, and makes sipping that eggnog a little less enjoyable.
Even with priority given to students with major and minor requirements, the process still breeds anxiety.
“I’m waitlisted for FCS 220 and I feel like the waitlisting system takes so long and is just making students more anxious and nervous about scheduling,” said Meghan Murphy, a junior health science major.
Sophomore Jem Salomon shares this feeling, and said even plan-B classes don’t always work out.
“I think the waitlist system causes a lot of anxiety and one has to always take in full account that if you don’t get in, you need another class to fall back on,” said Salomon. “But by the time you find out whether you really can’t take the class you get waitlisted on, every other class is filled. It’s just so stressful.”
Getting into decent Bradley Core Curriculum classes is difficult enough, but junior elementary education major Sarah David said signing up for classes became progressively worse as an upperclassman.
“Once the class levels get higher, it is hard to figure out what to do next since we have very [few] classes to fit our schedule,” said David. “That is why some students are forced to have harsh schedules that can either have them wake up for a 7:30 a.m. class or be stuck in classes for 8 hours straight.”
So what do we do about this? Can we do anything at all? As long as the honors students have priority scheduling, some class sizes are capped at 25 and the writing intensives are few-and-far-between, we’ll all just have to take part in these hunger games before cozying up to the fireplace.
There are, however, some tips to playing the game and doing so with a little less anxiety.
First, have a four-year plan. If you can’t get into the class this semester, knowing it could go into another semester could lessen the sweat on your brow.
Second, schmooze, schmooze, schmooze. If you reach out to the professor of the class and explain your reasoning for taking a creative writing course even though you’re a business major, the justification may be just enough to land you a seat.
Third, log out of Webster and make some tea. It won’t solve any of your class problems, but maybe it’ll calm you down enough to relax and enjoy the falling snow.
