Today was registration day for my class at W&M, which is a mixed bag; it's exciting to know what classes I'll be taking next semester, but the actual registration process is extremely stressful. I've heard of some schools that have systems where you just put in a request for what classes you want, with no time pressure, and you get placed in them based on priority (which I guess includes your year, your major, that sort of thing). Here at W&M, that's not how we do things.
We have an online system where everyone in each social class signs up for classes at once. That means that about 1500 sophomores all frantically tried to sign up for their classes at precisely 3:30 PM today. Unsurprisingly, the school's servers had trouble handling all that traffic and got pretty slow. Unfortunately, I was in a bit of a panic leading up to 3:30, because I discovered that there was a time conflict between my classes that I'd missed. Without boring you with all the details of my course planning, I ended up shuffling around three of my classes and making some fairly long-term planning decisions, all up to 5 minutes before zero hour. Thankfully, the process gets less stressful every year; the older you are, the earlier you get to register, so there's less worry about classes filling up before you can get in.
Anyway, schedule panic aside, here's my class schedule for this Spring.
(click for a full-size version)
Surprisingly, one of the classes I'm most looking forward to is one that I signed up for on a whim: Systems Programming. I had wanted to take Music Theory instead, but that was the class that I had to abandon because of the conflict. The description of Systems Programming looks like something that'll be fun and useful:
The design and implementation of programs which provide robust and efficient services to users of a computer. Macro processors; scripting languages; graphical interfaces; network programming. Unix and X are emphasized.
In addition, the professor is very highly rated on RateMyProfessors, which is always a good sign. The Computational Mathematics seminar is also kind of a shot in the dark. I'm only even able to take it because Music Theory would have been 4 credits and Systems Programming is 3, so I have an extra credit left around, and it looks like fun. Plus, it's marked as a writing course, which means it'll probably involve some individual work/research and will hopefully fill my major writing requirement for math.
All in all, it looks like a good semester, and with a nice lunch break from 12:00-2:00 (at least until I get my times for accompaniment and piano lessons...). Here's to surviving Stressfest, Spring 2011 Edition!
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