DESIGNING your dream schedule is easy. The University offers hundreds of challenging, fascinating courses on all of the subjects you could ever want to study. If you're in the College, you probably salivated at the thought of taking provocative courses on politics, history and culture, rounded out with a chick lit seminar and maybe a painting class for karma.
Unfortunately, as most of you have now learned, all of those classes are full except for a few that say "instructor permission only," which means that you are dead last on a very long waiting list that may or may not actually exist. Unless you are an Echols Scholar, this will be your experience for the next three years.
The good news is that a careful examination of the Course Offering Directory will reveal open spots in numerous courses. The bad news is that many of these courses require intermediate proficiency in Urdu.
Confronted with these limited options, many first years choose to sell out their sleep schedule in order to take classes within their prospective majors. But let me assure you that early morning classes are a terrible, terrible mistake that will cost you your health and sanity before midterms.
You may reason that you survived waking up in time for first period in high school, but you probably didn't stay up partying till four a.m. on weeknights.
If you did, you might be equipped for early morning lecture, but for everyone else, don't plan to get up before eleven. Despite your best intentions, you simply won't.
It is possible to get into good classes as a first year, but it will require extreme dedication on your part. Basically, you have to spend every waking moment of the next two months typing numbers into ISIS and clicking "add." The Course Offering Directly only refreshes enrollment numbers every few hours, so you never know exactly when spots will open up.
Your best chance is to attempt to add classes when they appear to be full, just in case someone has dropped the course since the last directory update. Ultimately, this probably won't work, but there is a chance that it might. I got into the best courses of my first year after weeks of fruitless clicking in glorious moments of random luck.
If constant, obsessive reloading of ISIS fails, you can always appeal to professors for a coveted signature on your course action form. In most cases, persistence will only annoy professors and make them determined to reject you. Professors have a hard enough time accommodating all of the slackers who forgot about their requirements until fourth year, and your first-year status places you at the bottom of their priority list.
Don't try to dazzle them with your qualifications or your interest in the subject matter; they get countless pleading e-mails every semester, and they most likely will read yours in a high-pitched sarcastic whine.
But since these professors won't remember your name anyway, you may as well give it a shot.
In your efforts to secure interesting classes, you may as well add your name to the online waiting lists. It's probably a futile gesture, but in the event of a gruesome viral epidemic that leaves half of the student body incapacitated for the first week of class, you just might move up far enough to have a chance. If you are on a waiting list, try coming to class early and spreading rumors about the professor's sadistic campaign against grade inflation.
Orientation leaders will probably encourage you to be patient, and to give the available courses a chance -- you just might learn to love a subject you never intended to study!
This is certainly a possibility, but college gets much, much better when you have the opportunity to pursue your true passions in small courses with the best professors.
For now, cross your fingers and keep clicking. The process is inefficient and obnoxious, but your persistence will be worthwhile if you score even one class that you're thrilled about taking. And keep this experience in mind next time the University plans to fundraise for a major athletics facility.
Cari Lynn Hennessy is a Cavalier Daily columnist. She can be reached at chennessy@cavalierdaily.com.
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