It’s that time once again.

It is time to schedule for next semester’s classes.

As a freshman, class scheduling was one of the most stressful experiences of my first semester.

I recall leaving my final advising meeting feeling confident in my class choices.

In fact, I was actually excited for my schedule.

What a mistake that was.

I began hearing mutterings and rumors among the student body about classes filling up.

It was at this time that I decided to go and take a look at my own schedule.

I found that not one, not two, not three, but four of my classes had been filled, and my backup classes hardly looked better.

To make it even worse, there were 30 people on the waiting list for microeconomics, which is required for my major.

I was sent into a panic.

I rushed directly to my adviser’s office, not knowing all the while if he would even be available.

Fortunately enough, he was.

He was able to calmly get me through the complicated scheduling process.

The two of us went on, cleaning up the scheduling fiasco that this school has dumped on my shoulders.

I was one of the lucky few who was able to get a hold of their adviser easily.

And even with all of that, I still didn’t even make it into all the classes I wanted.

On this recent Advising Day, the tension was palpable.

I could see the stress in everyone’s eyes while they desperately told their friends, “I only have two classes. I can’t find any more.”

Advising Day quickly devolved from a bad to a downright barbarous situation.

The major injustice of the system is that I and hundreds of other students are getting closed out of the classes that we want and need.

The administration, of course, can’t be bothered to even look at this problem.

They simply don’t care about the students.

Well, not as long as there’s a steady stream of white-collar dollars getting dumped in their pockets.

The system is so poorly designed that it verges on total incompetence.

What respectable institution routinely leaves everyone wanting classes they’ll never take?

I’m not a student athlete who gets everything delivered to them on a silver platter, and my mother never starred in an iconic sitcom.

So, I guess the best solution would be to pay my local community college more money to pick up Mercyhurst’s slack and fill the gaps in my education.

This scheduling problem rears its ugly head every semester.

There’s no way the administration does not know about it.

The only explanation is that they simply can’t be bothered to fix it.

This really begs a question.

If our college doesn’t even care about whether or not we’re taking the classes we want and need, what are we paying them for?