When I walked into my friends' room last Thursday (the last day to register for fall courses), one friend looked up from her desk at me with wild eyes and said, "Please observe the crisis in progress. Every class I want to take is a 12." She was flipping through the ORC and glaring at her computer screen because she couldn't find an alternate for the history class we both want. I glanced at her crisis and suggested, "Why don't you just consider a 9?" She did not find this at all funny and instead typed in an 11 -- which DarTerminal prompty rejected, because one of her first choices was already an 11. I expected her to start cursing and decided that I had chosen a bad time to visit when my friend calmly said, "OK, they have forced me to do it" and registered for a 9.
I, too, succumbed to the 9, but my resistance was not nearly as complete as my friend's. Whereas she only used the 9 as an alternate, I signed up for a theoretically unlimited English class which I fully intend to take. (I am aware that the English department's definition of unlimited varies from my own. Two friends registered for last term's "Pride and Prejudice" course which was listed as unlimited; neither got in. It would seem this defies the concept of unlimited ... but I digress.) I resisted the 9, because I love sleeping -- but then my roommate for next year reminded me that she will have morning drill in the fall. Damn, I'm a light sleeper, so it looks as if I'll be up as it is; might as well go to the 9.
For some of my friends and myself, registration is just not as painless a process as it should be. Granted, I have one friend who took about five minutes to go through the ORC, plan the perfect schedule and register. But I also received many blitzes which conveyed my friends' desperation over choosing that third course; my favorite such blitz was, "Would I rather die than take Econ. 1?" Both my friend who asked this and I are aware that economics does not number among my favorite Dartmouth classes; but I lied and told her "No" and she accepted this lie and registered for Econ 1.
It's the third course that seems to pose all the difficulties. The first two courses are usually obvious, especially if you're one of those lucky people with a major. I am not one of those people, alas, but I still hit upon a Psychology and a History class in all of 10 minutes. The third course, however, refused to be found. I moved from Geography to Comparative Literature to Religion to Jewish Studies to English back to Religion and finally back to that English 9 on the last Wednesday before registration. The distributive requirements were causing me much guilt. I felt as if I should accomplish something towards graduation, and since I already have a couple of LITs, I ought to have registered for a SCI or an INT. Yet while watching "Good Will Hunting," I snapped and decided there's plenty of time to take classes I don't really want to take. I'll just enjoy myself in the fall and save my suffering for the future.
I'm subscribing to my friend's SLA theory. She's decided that the new president is just going to eliminate the Lab requirement, so why should we go and take a Lab now? If, however, the president hasn't come through by our Sophmore Summer, we're going to take a Lab together where we get to frolic in the woods and do something cool like study pond scum.
Yet, despite the crises that registration seems to evoke among my friends, I am grateful for the process. In my life, I don't think I will ever again have such opportunity for fresh starts. Every term, we get to start all over with new professors, a new schedule, a new window seat and new used textbooks. Statistics imply that once I enter the work force, I won't be starting a new career every 10 weeks. I can't imagine what my state of mind would be if economics had been a 10-year and not a 10-week commitment. (Suicidal comes to mind.) So, despite the agony of trying to pick three courses, there's also the excitement that comes with flipping through the ORC. And if I delay long enough, maybe the lab requirement will just go away.