One Girl and Endless Full Classes

Albany, NY

Now if you think preparing for finals and studies were stressful, you’re probably wrong. At least in my opinion. Every semester, there comes a day where we sit down at our desk, open our laptop and immediately check our emails. There you sit hours on end, refreshing and looking for the time ticket information of the next semester’s class registration.

Now that’s almost 3-4 months ago when we registered for classes, but to this day I’m still overwhelmed by this registration process. You could even say I’m traumatized. I am missing one very important course in my Fall 2022 schedule which is required for me to complete my diploma. Every section for this course was full and had no more waitlist seats left for me to have a little hope in. I even tried to register for another course that I planned to take in the spring, but to no avail.

This process has left me in shambles and I had this internal feeling of panic; I simply just didn’t know what to do to fill up my fall credits. My friends have either had an earlier time ticket to be able to take the courses they want or need for their degree, or were lucky enough to squeeze into a course. Seeing them have an easier time than I did, it made me feel like I was going to fall behind in my coursework. This made worse with the fact that I had just recently switched my major from Health Science to Cell and Molecular Biology. I wanted to blame my university for having limited seats - especially for a very FULL year of students. But, I have to admit, it was partially my fault for not preparing another backup.

It wasn’t the end of the world though fortunately. Dieu Anh suggested taking a pharmaceutical class to fill one of my criteria for degree audit - something that I didn’t think about coming up with in the first place. It wasn’t the top choice or most practical choice in completing my major, but it was a class that was sufficient enough for my fall SEMESTER classes. I finally managed to get into that course without having to wait in the waitlist. I’m so grateful for Dieu Anh for helping me out while she was dealing with her course registration situation as well. It’s always beneficial to receive help from close ones when you are in a situation that you can’t resolve so easily on your own.

Moral of the story?

Class registration won’t go the same for everyone; you can easily slide into a course or you wait several months to hear that the course you want won’t open another section. It goes the same for other situations in life, but you just have to keep pushing forward till you got it.

- Ivy