As the daughter of a Towson alum I was warned about this years ago, but I never took it seriously until I got here. Ask anyone on campus — the hard part about getting to your Bachelor’s Degree isn’t necessarily passing all the classes for your core and major – it’s getting into them at all. Filling your shopping cart weeks in advance might not be enough to help you if you weigh in at fewer than 60 credits. This is true across most majors, and even in smaller majors, students still panic when they see their registration day is not the first day of open enrollment. It can feel like you’re up against the world, or at the very least, a small army of other liberal arts majors and you’re ready to fight.
But don’t let anxiety about getting a particular class ruin your whole month. In a lot of cases, as my advisor spent fifteen minutes proving to me, there are many ways to fill a major requirement. If there’s only one, having a good relationship with your advisor and people in your major’s department can really help you. Mentors are great allies, or in some cases, are just there to prepare you for the road ahead.
Even if you have that advantage, it can still be nerve-wracking to watch those green circles turn into yellow triangles in your cart. Especially for classes that you really wanted to take. During my transfer orientation, I was told that I should not get my hopes up to get into a full class even if I was number one on the waitlist. Not getting my hopes up really is not my style though. From personal experience, I am pretty quick to drop a class and try to replace it. That certainly gets my hopes up that other people will do the same.
Personally, I filled my cart two weeks before my enrollment date, checking the waitlist on each of the six classes. I checked it every day to see if my classes were getting full so I could add alternatives to save time on the big day. This seems a little obsessive but it was highly recommended by my advisors and friends who have been at Towson longer than I have. There was a small pay off because I did see that a philosophy class I needed filled up and I was able to get my alternatives figured out, within in the parameters of my dream schedule, before I actually had to register. Some people I know have as many as eighteen classes just waiting in their cart right now, just to make sure that they can meet their degree requirements. This whole thing is obviously set up to be fair.
Good luck with registration for spring and may the odds be ever in your favor!