Back to School
(I have a follow-up planned to last night’s post, but this isn’t it; maybe tomorrow.)
My daughter Ashley starts college in a little more than a week; today she finally got a look at her schedule for the fall semester. The good news is that she got all three of the dance classes she requested (her major), the bad news is that the rest of her schedule is a train wreck. She’s not signed up for marching band, which she really wants to do, and she is signed up for Biology… the one lab science that she really doesn’t want to take. To round it out, they filled in one of her many liberal ed requirements, and she’s not happy with the choice.
While no course changes are accepted before everyone reports to school, they already have time set aside for each freshman to meet with an adviser and make changes before classes start. So we spent a couple hours tonight, going over all of the General Ed/Liberal Ed requirements and options, reading up in the catalog, and identifying the courses she’s interested in. This includes many courses she’ll be taking in semesters to come. There’s a small chance one of the dance courses will conflict with band rehearsals, but we think it will work, and she’s going to check with the band staff before check in.
It took forever, and brought back memories of collegiate bureaucracy for both her mother and I, but it was also fun, and totally worth it. She was a bit upset when she first saw her schedule; I think she’s a lot more comfortable with it now that she knows she has some options.
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Good grief, I remember trying to get all that straight. Even with help from some of the course advisers it was difficult to get all that straight. The pressure really starts to pile on as you get closer to actually graduating!
That first year schedule is always brutal though. She can take comfort in the fact that she will be muscling out all the first year students soon enough.
That first year is tough, but it did provide me with enough bad roommate stories to last a lifetime. They’re hilarious now, of course. :-)
That’s an interesting way to do schedules. Is it like that for all years, or just incoming freshman?
Well, Ashley submitted a list of classes she wanted to take, and at least she got the dance classes. We think she didn’t get English or math classes because we were waiting on AP scores in both subjects. And at the time, we didn’t know marching band was a class. Now that she’s enrolled, she has access to online scheduling info including open/closed sessions and times- so hopefully in the future she’ll be able to sign up for exactly what she wants.
As to roommates, housing is at a premium right now, so she’ll have two roommates in a room meant for two, for a little while at least. That’s supposed to be fixed before the end of the first semester. The good news is that she’s already talked to one of her roommates by phone and online, and they’ve hit it off. So hopefully no roommate horror stories.