Is it just me or is fall quarter starting to take a long time to finish?
I started off the quarter with my annual first-day-school pact that I was going to be a better student and devote more time to school this year. Well, that lasted for about a week. Then midterms came, and suddenly my house became very clean — anything to distract me from studying became a welcomed activity.
Now, I’m in this mid-quarter slump, and I’m ready to be done with all my classes. I believe the scientific term for this is same shit, different day. I’ve been counting down to Thanksgiving break since week two.
But, on Tuesday I began to see the light at the end of the seemingly endless tunnel that is fall quarter — PASS opened up!
For those of you who do not know what PASS is (a.k.a. freshmen) it is the Plan a Student Schedule application on your Cal Poly Portal that becomes the most visited website in your Internet history during the last few weeks of the quarter.
I spent the majority of last Tuesday looking at PASS, planning the perfect winter quarter schedule. There are a few things to keep in mind for winter quarter: it’s really cold, and it gets dark earlier. So you might want to avoid taking classes too early or too late in the day. There’s also the issue of finding the perfect instructor with the help of polyratings.com.
So I had my vision for winter quarter, but 10 minutes into exploring PASS, I realized my dreams probably weren’t going to come true. As those of you who have been at Cal Poly for a few years may know, once you’ve taken the majority of the classes you need to graduate, coordinating those last few classes can become a huge challenge.
It turns out that half of the classes I thought I was going to take this quarter aren’t even being offered. And the ones that are, are all being offered at the same exact time. And, of course, only one section of each class will be offered so the only thing Poly Ratings will do for me is warn me of what’s inevitably to come.
But, all kinks in the system aside, I finally found my perfect schedule. However, I had to remind myself (and novices to PASS should be forewarned) that it is very rare that the schedule you create on PASS becomes the schedule you actually get when you register.
PASS seems to create the illusion that your shiny, brand-new, perfect schedule is going to happen and next quarter is going to be the best one yet. But there always seems to be some problem.
Whether it be that the CPreg doesn’t recognize one of the prerequisites you have, or that the class says there are five spaces available but when you check it out the class says it’s full, there is always a problem.
Of course, having a good registration time can give you some advantage. Last quarter, I registered on the seventh day, and somehow got into all of the classes I wanted. However, I have friends who haven’t gotten into classes when they took a priority registration. It’s all a nervous waiting game.
This quarter I’m scheduled to register on the second day. This sounds great, but it seems like everyone I talk to plans on taking a priority registration this quarter, so really it’s like I register on the fifth day because everyone and their mother will be registering early.
All we can do is wait, and hope that there is still a spot for us in the classes we want when our registration date approaches. Or, start sucking up to your teachers now and begging for permission numbers.
Enjoy PASS while you can, Mustangs, because CPreg isn’t so fun.