The most dreadful day of the academic year

There is one time of the semester that students look forward to the absolute least at my school.

That dreaded time is referred to as class registration.

I should start off by saying that my school is on the small side. There are just over 14,500 students enrolled at Florida Gulf Coast University.

Class registration dates are assigned on a per person basis depending on how many credit hours have been completed by the student. The higher the credit hours, the sooner you can register for next semester’s classes. Ideally, this means that seniors have the first pick, then juniors and so on.

A couple weeks before the first registration day, courses are added to the school’s portal to view the class size, day and time so that students are able to plan what their schedules will look like. After picking a class, there is a course reference number (CRN) that students will write down. This is what students register with.

All of that is pretty standard across the board for most universities. However, the registration process itself is where things get a little messy at my school.

After finding all the classes you will take and writing down the CRN, you wait for the dreaded registration day to come.

Also, let me mention that advisors are pretty booked up for the month preceding registration day and for about a month after. So, if you weren’t one of the lucky ones to make an appointment early, you’re pretty much on your own when it comes to building the perfect schedule.

The day before registration finally arrives and it feels like the most nerve-racking day ever. Students double and triple-check that they wrote down the correct CRN for each class to ensure there will be no bumps in the road the next day when registering, right? Wrong.

Registration opens at 6 a.m. on the dot, so most students set their alarms to 5:50 a.m. This way, they have 10 nerve-filled minutes to mentally prepare for the technological massacre that is about to happen on their computer screen.

By 5:59 a.m., each student is logged into the portal and ready to refresh the page.

Now, this is the turning point of how each student’s registration experience is going to go.

In some cases, 6 a.m. hits, you refresh the page and you are forced to stare at the loading wheel of death for about two or three minutes (which feels like hours). Then, the page will finally load with a message saying, “the server is experiencing and overload of traffic,” or, “you have been logged out of Gulfline.” If either of these happen, you are forced to sign back in, which at that point it’s much too late.

If you are one of the lucky ones and happen to get through at 6 a.m., you have to scramble to type in your CRNs and press submit. Once again, you are usually faced with the loading wheel.

Once the page finally loads, nine times out of 10, at least one or two of the classes that needed is already full.

At this point, there is not much that can be done. Unfortunately, I feel as though my school’s registration is based purely on luck and timing.

Did every student have to go through this hell?

I decided to look into the biggest college in Florida to see what their process was like.

Not only is the University of Central Florida the biggest college in Florida, it is the biggest school in the nation as it’s home to over 64,000 students.

According to UCF’s website, UCF offers open advising to all students during registration time so that students feel comfortable with making their schedules.

Also, UCF offers at registration helpline that is available at all times for students to call and ask questions about the registration process.

I wanted a student’s perspectives, so I talked to Anthony Casasnovas, a senior studying biomedical science at UCF.

“There is a specific time when registration opens, but there is no rush at all,” said Casasnovas. “I can go in and register for classes days after registration opens and still have no problem getting into any class I need.”

This shocked me.

He continued to tell me that registration times were never at 6 a.m. They were always sometime in the afternoon or evening so that students did not have to wake up or have the possibility of sleeping through registration.

Not only that, but Casasnovas said that when they do go to register, they are able to enter the CRN for each of their courses prior to the registration period.

He said they keep them in a “cart” until they are ready to register, and then all of the classes are registered for at once.

Of course, I understand that UCF is a much bigger school that offers many more classes than FGCU, but why can’t we adopt some aspects of their registration process ideas?

Class registration is an important part of college. The problem with FGCU’s registration process goes much further than being annoyed because we have to wake up at 6 a.m.

I know way too many people who have graduated anywhere from a semester to a year late because they could not get the class they needed or people that could only take two classes and lost their financial aid.

Because our school is so much smaller, it makes sense that advisors are so booked. Maybe we should offer online virtual advising appointment or open up a helpline like UCF does for students that have questions.

I have noticed that the school has never asked what students think about the process. There has never been any surveys or emails asking for thoughts on the process.

Since students are the ones going through registration, maybe students should be able to voice their concerns in hopes of tweaking the process.