Registration

The purple one is me. Yeah, that's right - the one who's WINNING.

I consider The Perfect Class Schedule to be the ultimate achievement in the college world, followed by Free Alcohol, Convincing A GTF To Give You A Higher Grade, and, somewhere much further along the line, Graduation. The Perfect Schedule resides at the top of the list because once you have that element of your life in order, everything else falls into place.

Class registration has come once again, and starting tomorrow at 8:00, I’ll be able to register for the four classes that will determine how much bitching I’m going to be doing over the course of the next term. Students are allowed to register based both on how many credits they have as well as the last four digits of their student ID number – this element of randomocity ensures that no matter how long you’ve been going to school, you’ve still got just as good a chance to get screwed out of the classes you want as everyone else.

In the days leading up to my appointed registration time, I’ve gone to painstaking lengths to find classes that live up to my criteria:

No Classes Before 10:00: I spent four years getting up at 6:00 AM every day for jazz band in high school – six years, if you count middle school jazz band as well. As far as I’m concerned, that’s all the waking up early I’ll ever need in my life. So help me God, I will not find out what the garbage men look like around here.

Tuesdays And Thursdays Only: This just might be the only time in my life that I’ll be able to get away with only having to put pants on twice a week (and potentially less than that, if the University alters its definition of sexual harassment).

Overall Coolness: Once I’ve isolated classes that take place after 10:00 on Tuesdays and Thursdays, I cross reference the instructors with RateMyProfessor.com to make sure I’m not walking into a “No laptops allowed, and I will be taking attendance every day” sort of situation.

Relevance To My Major (Optional): I’d really like it if The Perfect Schedule fulfilled all of my credit requirements and put me on track for graduation. I’d also like to barbecue with Jack Nicholson.* Some things are just too good to be true. In the pursuit of perfection we all have to make some sacrifices, and a 400 level Volcanology class that meets at 2:00 on Tuesdays and Thursdays is one of them.

*”Say, Mr. Nicholson, why aren’t you using any A1 on your steak?” “I guess I just don’t see the point in ordering something ‘rare as hell’ if you’re not gonna be able to taste the blood. And Truman {shades off}, call me Jack, for Chrissake.”

All told, I put one hell of a lot more work into selecting and structuring my classes than I do into the classes themselves.

The main roadblock to me achieving schedule nirvana is the presence of my arch nemesis: other people. Yes, I am not the only one who wants to get up as late as possible for infrequent education, and the competition with other students for the cherriest classes is usually why I wind up taking classes that require me to get up when it’s dark outside.

For example, I had earmarked J387 as a class I wanted to take next term – a class about journalism history or law or karate that, more importantly, met from 4:00 until 5:20 PM. Monday night, I saw that there were twelve openings left in the class, and held my breath in hopes of securing a spot for myself. Today, however, I found that twelve punk-ass bitches with earlier registration times than my own had already discovered the class and filled it up.

Seeing that was like watching my dreams get executed in front of me by the Viet Kong. Sure, they’re also offering J387 at the same time on Monday and Wednesday, but then I’d be in class a whopping four days a week, like a chump.

As we speak, there is only one spot left open in J371, the introductory magazine journalism class that is more or less the cornerstone of my major, and (ideally) a class that I will like (which, in a rare and fortunate coincidence, happens to start at noon). Constantly refreshing DuckWeb and earnestly monitoring that single solitary digit, I can only darkly wonder how many other people with my registration time are doing the same thing, eagerly plotting how quickly they’ll pounce on that last spot as soon as they become eligible to register tomorrow morning. The rush for the final opening in J371 will start out like a horse race and end like Reservoir Dogs.

To pass the time between page reloads, I’ve been pacing back and forth in my room, fantasizing about bounding to my computer tomorrow morning and typing the course registration number for J371 into the registration window mere milliseconds before my legions of competitors. Then my imagination runs wild, fueled by my somewhat quaint ideas about how the Internet works:

I picture a cluster of ones and zeroes (my registration) rocketing through a maze of tubes (the Internet) at breakneck speeds (broadband) toward some grand docking mechanism with only one space left open (J371). My registration is in a desperate race against several other clusters of ones and zeroes (my competitors’ registrations), and it just barely manages to squeeze into the final spot ahead of all the others, causing the students controlling them on the other end of the Internet to throw up their hands and curse while I triumphantly backflip onto a motorcycle and ride off into the sunset at breakneck speeds. I must hurry, because the barbecue is about to begin, and Jack Nicholson does not like to be kept waiting.

Truman Capps admits that there is also a J371 class offered at 8:00 on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but… Well, there you have it.