Five College Class Scheduling Tips and Tricks for IU Students

It’s hard to believe that I have already scheduled for my second semester of college.  It seems like just yesterday that I was scheduling for my first semester of college.  Check that.  It seems like just yesterday that I was scheduling for my final year of high school.  Fortunately I’ve learned a few scheduling tips and tricks since my final year of high school when I didn’t know the difference between an A&H, S&H, and N&M.  Here are the top five:

Prior to scheduling, place your desired classes into your shopping cart.  To do so, enter the Student Center, enter the Enrollment Shopping Cart, and select the correct term.  From there, search for your desired classes and place them in your shopping cart.  Be sure to click “validate” at least once a day to make sure that your desired classes are still available; be sure to have backup classes in case that they are not.  When your assigned time to schedule arrives, just click “enroll.”  No frantically searching for your desired classes as another student—who most definitely used the shopping cart—takes the last available spot in PSY-P101.

Rather than spreading your classes out, try to schedule your classes close together and either end classes early or start classes late.  Otherwise, when will you (finally) tackle that growing pile of laundry or dirty dishes?

Nobody warned me that walking from Cedar Hall to the Television-Radio Building takes the average human being more than fifteen minutes.  Now I must make the trek every Tuesday and Thursday.  So I’m warning you:  walking from Cedar Hall to the Television-Radio Building takes the average human being more than fifteen minutes.  Keeping a map of campus open on the desktop as you schedule can save you from more than a few blisters.

Don’t underestimate the importance of balancing your schedule.  Doing so is more than balancing easy classes with hard classes.  Be sure to balance classes from your major with classes from your minor with general education classes.  I don’t care how much you think you love English, five classes about Shakespeare just isn’t healthy.  Furthermore, be sure to balance reading-intensive courses with writing-intensive courses with courses that are, well, neither reading- nor-writing-intensive.  As a journalism major (writing-intensive) with a political science minor (reading-intensive), I realize that this can be a difficult feat to achieve.  Slipping in one blow-off class, however, can be a huge sanity-saver.

Click http://www.ratemyprofessors.com  Enough said.

For more scheduling tips and tricks, check out these helpful blogs.  Happy scheduling!

• Picking Classes - Lucky number 5
• Overcome the Woes of Spring Scheduling