My experience with scheduling

Sam Peterson, Staff writer

Scheduling is a time of the year that students anticipate and fear with equal measure. My scheduling experience this semester was a tense one, and I think it reflects some of the issues that students have with the current scheduling system.

I walked briskly out of my Accounting course the moment it ended. Glancing down at my watch, I read with dread that it was 8:55 a.m. I still had 11 whole minutes before my registration time at 9:06 a.m.

As I strode toward the nearest lounge with my trusty laptop, my head spun with suffocating thoughts. What if the classes I planned were actually at Mercyhurst North East, and I just hadn’t noticed when signing up? What if I needed a hidden prerequisite class? What if students randomly decided to switch to the six available seats in the specific class I want?

I knew, deep down, that these thoughts were silly. The odds of six students joining the class I wanted to take at the same time was incredibly unlikely. But still, I was incredibly worried despite that.

I slammed my coffee down next to the available couch in the lounge and whipped open my laptop. As it booted up, I had one final thought: “What if my schedule is too demanding?”

My meticulously built schedule suddenly seemed ripe with many flaws.

What would I do in the massive four-hour gap between my classes? Would I really end up having to drive home two whole times in one day? For perspective, the trip takes me 20 entire minutes as a commuter.

Going back and forth twice every day would total up to 80 minutes of travel time in a single day.

And if I start at 8 AM every day, I’ll perpetually have to get up extremely early and be tired while also supporting work, a social life and homework.

With my mind suddenly changing its view to create a brighter future, I made last-minute major changes to my schedule. There were mere minutes left as I added my last new section, when suddenly Self Service communicated to me there was an error.

My heart jumped as I thought to myself, terrified, “Why now?” However, I didn’t let this menial, insignificant error hamper me. With the clock ticking, I reset the service and got the same error.

My mind was racing again. Is this going to keep happening? What if this error was happening to everyone else? If it is happening to everyone else, then what is it that I should do?

I determined that there wasn’t time to ask the registrar. Sweating bullets, I made the incredibly difficult and costly decision to restart my trusty laptop. It booted back up instantly with no problems, to my great relief. I quickly navigated back to Self Service.

The time read 9:05 a.m., and I gulped heavily as the page slowly loaded. A sigh of relief escaped my mouth as I saw all the changes I made were still intact, and confidently refreshed my page to register.

I was left with a schedule that fit my commuter availability, while still keeping 18 credits.

However, registering for classes remains stressful, and the strange error still exists. Overall, my biggest issue with registering was the error. I think that registering for classes is such an important time for students that there shouldn’t be any errors like this.

Anything, even a small error like this, can be the difference between a student getting the class they want, and having to rethink their entire schedule.

Overall, scheduling was an interesting experience, but it has its flaws.