Registering for classes is both exciting and painful.
Exciting because you have the opportunity to make yourself a perfect week. You want 3-day weekends? Sure! Don't want to wake up before noon? No Problem! If you don't want friday classes or to wake up before noon, its probably possible. But you must always remember that no matter how much you plan, this is just a theoretical schedule and you could end up with late night friday classes and mondays that start at 8 on a campus 30 minutes away (don't forget about rush hour!).
This is where the pain starts.
Unless you are coming into college with 105 or more credits, you get the chance to watch for a week as you perfect schedule slowly deteriorates. And then, when it is your turn to register, you must remember that it is also 12,000 other people's turn to register, and well, the system will be slow, you will hear screams of joy and those of grief as people find out that there is just not enough room for them in the one three hour lab that fits into their perfect, now refined, schedule.
However, the excitement comes back into play over break. Where you develop a obsession with the refresh button as you sit in front of the computer and pray that someone out there, is foolish enough to drop that lab section, and when someone is, you scoff it up, and never, ever let go. You parade around the house announcing to no one that yes, karma, god, and the flying spaghetti monster are all on your side. And then suddenly, your schedule begins to look more like that perfect idea you had months before and everything works out just fine.
Scheduling is not the gruesome ordeal that people make it out to be. You will get into classes, they may not be perfect but as long as they work for requirement (or not), you're fine. The add/drop period is my favorite time of the year because all of a sudden classes that you never thought you could get suddenly become available to you.
Here's a clip of my schedule for next semester:
For 18 credits, it looks pretty darn good to me =]
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