Monday, June 9, 2008

Class Registration


I'm wondering, how many of you incoming freshman had an interesting time signing up for classes?

I don't know about you folks on the east coast, but for those of us out west signing up for classes on the Monday, June 9th registration date was far from fun. According to my school of thinking, the sooner you log in, the more classes there are available. Since registration was to begin at 8:00 AM Eastern Standard Time, that meant waking up fifteen minutes before 5:00 AM my time (PST) to prepare my list of classes and login.

When I woke up at 4:45 and made my way towards the computer, I was hoping that this would be the earliest I would ever have to wake up for a George Washington University event. When I was ready to begin registration, I sat at the computer stressfully awaiting the stroke of 5:00 AM. When it came, I entered in my CRN's as fast as I could and clicked "submit". I got all of the classes I wanted except for the apparently popular U20 Sports writing class.

I hope next year that the freshman course registrations are more tailored towards west coast students, or one could just choose to sign up on one of the many other days available, but where's the fun in that?

For more info about class registration, you can visit GW's freshman class registration page

10 comments:

Name said...

My freshman year, we couldn't register until we were at CI, which was a pretty terrible idea. We registered in random shifts, and mine was pretty late, so I got my third or fourth choices in nearly everything. It was kind of a headache.

Bottom line, it sucks that you had to wake up that early, but I can't think of any easy way to get around it. Except for time-travel, which is clearly GW's next step in world domination.

Emily Berger said...

As a fellow Californian, I completely feel for you.

I promise registration gets easier (especially when you're on the East Coast) but I can't promise that other, similarly ridiculous problems won't arise during your time at GW.

It's also unfair that blackboard closes at 5pm for those of us on the West, instead of 8pm like on the East. A huge disadvantage for West Coasters with day jobs.

My recommendation to GW: Stagger registration opening times based on time zones and divide up slots in each class to create equal opportunity for each student to get their class preferences (the same way spots are "held" during the first registration day for second day registration students).

I half-expect a lame "blackboard software doesn't work like that" line from the administration, but I imagine with all of GW's millions and brilliant computer science professors, that could be fixed.

Thanks for posting!

Megan said...

As much as I hate to sound spoiled, I woke up Saturday morning at 10:45 AM EST and stretched, yawned, signed up for classes, and went back to sleep.

So try not to be too jealous... I'm jealous that you set GWU history ;) You are a BRAVE person for signing up for that scheduling day... if I had to wake up at 5 I would have ended up with 6 credit hours taking graduate school classes at awkward hours! I don't know how you had the brain power to do it... but I'm glad your class schedule worked out!!!

Anonymous said...

see, but today's registration starts at 3 pm EST, so that would have been much more convenient for anyone on the west coast. It sucks that you had to get up so early, but when signing up they assured us there was no advantage to any particular sign-up date. You could have chosen another time to sign up.

Dave Raish (Guest Blogger) said...

I know I could have chosen a different time to sign up, such as Tuesday, but really I don't think I realized exactly what I was doing, and like I said, where's the fun in that.

As soon as I'd finished I went back to bed for five hours so it was only really bad while it was happening.

Regardless, it was a bad idea.

Claire Low (Guest Blogger) said...

I promise it gets much easier. By your Junior year you can pretty much get whatever classes you want and you can go back to bed in 3 minutes. I'll echo sarah's comment... Registering at CI was horrible.

Anonymous said...

Though they may have "assured us that there was no advantage to any particular sign up date", we were grossly mislead. I signed up for the last registration date, thinking just that, because I work during the day every day. When I went to register today, every single class I wanted was closed. All 4of my alternates were closed, in every section, at any time! It was ridiculous, and now I'm stuck in a language two levels under what I should take, and with all other electives that don't count for anything in my major. Basically, I'm not too happy.

AdamGreen said...

Terricia, have you notified GW administration about that?

Daniella said...

I'm in Los Angeles and I signed up for Tuesday thinking that I'd be wide awake and ready to register. Big mistake!

I ended up having to ditch a final fourth period and none of the classes I wanted or my back-ups were open. So I woke up at 4:30 this morning and registered. This entire process is pretty depressing. :-(

Anonymous said...

its not just the west coast, im on the east coast and i signed in right on time for the registration and everything and still couldnt get into any of the UW20 classes. the only one available was some latin writing class or something it was pretty ridiculous. It better b easier to get into a UW class 2nd sememster.