Man, I'm gonna party, and sleep in, and- OH S**T

[Gawdzillers]

Went to Freshman orientation for the university I'm going to today. It was fun, up until they told me I had to fill in my schedule. This was a problem for me because in high school, I've always just picked the classes I want and they would give me what times they were. With this, I immediately thought, "I'm in over my head"

I just now got a chance to think clearly about it and I've finally figured my schedule out, so everything's cool now, but it really put a damper on the whole day.

[Kheldarson]

I thought that was the best part of college. I got to design my day. Best part of orientation, but that's me ^__~

[Exaspera]

Oh dear. Let the learning curve begin!

[Greenday]

Haha. My fall semester freshman year was picked out for me. I probably could have edited it but I had no need to. Only options I had was to test out of classes.

Honestly, I loved being able to schedule classes. Once you do it once or twice, it's really easy. I learned if I have a hard class at 1pm and an easier class at 8am, I will get a better grade in the hard class at 1pm. I don't function as well at 8am. I will constantly be yawning. I'll be putting more effort into staying awake than learning. So I learned to take classes no earlier than 11am if I could help it.

Not sure if I should be missing college or glad that I'm done with all the work.

[sarasquirrel]

i didnt make my first semester schedule, the school did and i had fridays off!!

i made them for the rest of my time there. so for the most part it was good, take morning classes and go into work in the afternoon. full time for both school and work (kinda sucky)

8am classes....bad
8am saturday classes? really bad

twice....twice i had to take 8 am sat. classes (wasnt forced to but, it was the only way to fit well into my school/work sched)

i do not miss school though thank you

[Pony_Boy]

I always tried to mae sure I had Wensdays free rather then Fridays ( like most people did so they can drink and party on Thursdays)

2 reasons for this:

- Breaing the week in half like that really cuts down on stress
- At my University most of the classes on Fridays were optional workshops anyway

[Jester]

I thought that was the best part of college. I got to design my day.

Agreed. After my first semester, which my advisor scheduled, I scheduled all my classes. I used to go into the computer lab with the class schedule and work out my schedule on a spreadsheet. (Still one of the best uses I've ever had for spreadsheets!) Of course, if a class was full or unavailable for some reason, I then had to do some tinkering, but it was still pretty cool to be able to do it myself.

I made a point of not having early morning classes if it could be helped. I don't do mornings well, never have. And I managed to avoid the dreaded 7:40 am classes so many people got stuck with. (Sadly, I did get trapped into a 7:40 am final one time...on a Saturday. Yes, that sucked great big donkey balls.) But overall, designing my own schedule was great, and had a lot of advantages. Heck, one semester I was done with all my classes by Thursday at noon. That was a great semester, and myself and a few other dormmates partied our asses off Thursday nights, much to the chagrin of the architecture and engineering students in our dorm.

Another thing I did a lot of was scheduling night classes. Now, different schools work differently, but when I was at ASU, night classes were typically three hours and once a week (as opposed to being more broken up over more days, like most classes). And by taking just one a semester, I cleared up so much time in the rest of my schedule. The one thing I discovered, though, is that it had to be an interesting class, because there is nothing worse than being stuck for three straight hours in something that puts you right to sleep. Of course, not every class offers a night option, but when available, it is definitely something to consider.

[jedimaster91]

Am I the only one who actually liked the 7:45 classes? My second semester, I only had one class on Thursdays, so I was completely done with school by 9am. Tuesdays I was done by 11:30 or so. It was GREAT! I loved being done early so I could do whatever I wanted the rest of the day. I hated when my only class didn't start until 2pm.

[Magpie]

I don't like having only one class, and it being in the afternoon. However, having only one class on a day is enough of a treat that I put up with it.

Don't let what time the class is be the only deciding factor. If there's a course that sounds really interesting, take it. You'll do better in a class that you're really interested in than in pretty much any other "more-ideal" class. Some people picked their fourth-year classes (our faculty is really nice and mostly schedules for us) based on what was easy. They might work less, but they have a worse fourth year than people who pick all interesting classes and then discover that they were the hardest classes available. You're more likely to make it to a really early (really late if you're a morning person) class that you're interested in than to a noon class that you consider boring.

[pssorens]

Agree with Jester 100% on the night classes. Just by taking one night class on a monday night. I was able to clear up enough of my schedule that I only had two classes a day for the rest of the week, and those were between the hours of 12-4.

[BookstoreEscapee]

Haha. My fall semester freshman year was picked out for me. I probably could have edited it but I had no need to. Only options I had was to test out of classes.

Mine was, too. (We did get our schedule at orientation, and chose our top three Freshman Seminar topics; found out later which seminar we were in.)Though I did drop the swimming class they put me in, because i had no desire to take swimming as a gym class (I claimed ear problems, which was also true).

Later semesters I generally tried to schedule at least Tuesday/Thursday afternoons free. My last semester I had 3 classes Monday/Wednesday/Friday, and one class at 9am on Tuesday/Thursday, which I did on purpose to get me out of bed. I had a directed (aka independent) study class on Victorian Lit and an internship copy-editing a textbook one of the Psych professors was writing while she was on materity leave/sabbatical, which was all independent work, as well. So I got up, went to class, went home, edited some pages, met my friend for lunch, went home, watched Days of Our Lives, and did Victorian Lit in the afternoon.

I think it makes more sense to have them more or less pick your schedule the first semester, since most Freshmen aren't really into their major classes (if they've even declared one), and for later semesters you have more time to decide what classes you want/need to take and when. If they said at Freshman orientation that I had to set my whole class schedule for the semester I'd have been saying "what?" as well.

Not sure if I should be missing college or glad that I'm done with all the work.

Yes, you should.