Sweat drips down your face. Your heartbeat quickens, your finger poised on the mouse. The cursor is hovering around the refresh button. The clock strikes 9 a.m., you click the button and . . . the server is down!

For many, registering for classes is about as easy as replacing a booby-trapped artifact with a bag of sand. If you enter LORA on the morning of registration day to find a hold on your account blocking your access to scheduling, you may as well just drop out and join the circus.

Even if there is no hold on your account, every semester, without fail, LORA crashes just when we need to get online and register. You would think that after the 87th time the system failed that someone would fix the problem or at least devise a new schedule for registering that doesn’t overload LORA.

I guess the frustration of not being able to get into the one class you need to graduate—The History of Blood Letting in Ancient Macedonia—is just part of the college experience.

While we’re at it, who came up with the registration schedule, anyway? Why do freshman get to register before seniors? Shouldn’t the class with the least amount of time left get first dibs of classes?

As it is now, freshmen get first choice of classes, then seniors, followed by juniors, leaving sophomores to pick through the discarded leftovers. Hope you like Dish Washing 101 and Politics of South Dakota sophomores, because that’s just about all that’s left by Friday.

I don’t understand why freshmen, the students with the most time to take required classes, get to register before all the other classes. I’m not saying that they don’t deserve a chance to get the classes they want, but most freshmen can’t take upper level courses because they lack the prerequisites or they have to take core curriculum classes first.

It’s true that many of the most interesting classes fill up quickly. But there are so many classes offered that, ultimately, everyone gets something they want. In the worst case scenario, a class that you are required to take fills up before you get a chance to enroll, but most of the professors are pretty understanding and will offer you a seat card or put you on a waiting list.

In the end, we all get the classes we need, even if we have to wait a semester or two to take them. And though we may not always get the classes we want, sometimes things work out for the best.

Holly Combs can be reached at [email protected]