Arena Registration

Every school has their own methods of signing up students for classes. Many are now conducted purely online from the comfort of your own home or dorm room—just point and click and you're all signed up for your next semester. A thing of beauty. In my days at Franklin Pierce College they opted for a different system: Arena Registration.

Arena Registration can best be described as an intellectual Holocaust. A hellish, maddening, senseless rite of passage that all students must endure each year. Hazing is forbidden at Franklin Pierce, yet Arena Registration is worse than any amount of fraternity punishment.

It starts out simple. You receive a package in your mailbox containing a letter that says when you're supposed to show up to the 'arena' (a gymnasium), and a booklet containing all the courses, numbers, professors, and schedules for the next semester's classes. All you need to do is show up, sign up, and you're done. A cake walk. 5, maybe 10 minutes and you'll be cruising out of there to enjoy your afternoon, class schedule in-hand. Hah! Dream on Freshman. The only way you leave Arena Registration is in a body bag or a straight jacket.

When you show up to your first Arena Registration at 8 a.m. you'll find a line snaking out of the building and circling the parking lot. You see sleeping bags, pillows, and coffee canisters littering the scene. Students who have already experienced this tragedy have learned to camp outside of the gym and be first in line come the morning. By 4 a.m. the line is already hundreds long. You will proceed to stand in this line for several hours without it moving. Only 200 students are allowed inside at a time, like some sort of exclusive, red-velvet rope nightclub. By noon you might actually make it to the entrance. An admissions officer with a clipboard will peruse the list for your name, give you a nametag, some papers, and a pencil. Now, you will finally be ushered inside.

On first glance, the scene before you can best be described as Ground Zero or the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Students are lined up at only 4 computer stations containing the class rosters. Other students are in line to mandatorily speak with a Financial Aid Officer. In another corner is a heap of students, sitting down, weeping and defeated. Tear-stained faces, shredded papers, trash, backpacks, and sleeping bags all blending together so it looks like an internment camp. Off to the side is a long table where many professors sit—their sole job to console students who can't get into their classes, or if they're lucky enough, to sign a permission slip and join an already full class. They are all drinking Irish coffee and mimosas. The sound of 20-year olds weeping, screaming, and running from line to line is defeaning as it echoes off the gym walls and floor. It sounds like you're in a front row mosh pit at a concert of misery.

Before you can begin sign ups, you must be cleared by the Bursar's Office and receive a stamp on your class sign-up sheet. No stamp, no classes. Period. So you will wait in this line just to be berated by the financial aid staff for not ponying up enough tuition. If you are seriously behind payment schedule, you will be sent out of Arena Registration to go wait in a separate line at the actual Financial Aid building. One in every 3 students leaves this line sobbing to trudge down to see the Bursar himself. We will never see these students again.

If you are lucky enough to get the financial stamp of approval on your sign-up sheet, you will move onto a fresh hell. Now you have to wait in line at one of the computers to check the availability of the classes you want to sign up for. Panic will start to rise as you see student after student in front of you leave the computer station in a rage, fists clenched, knuckles white, and sign-up sheets blank or smudged after being erased several times. You'll want to call out to them "What is it?! What's going on?! What can I expect when I get up there?! Please! Tell me something!" But they are dead men walking.

When you sit down at the computer station, you will start typing in all of the class titles that you want or need to take. You'll start with the general education classes first—the ones required to graduate. Your first searches look incredibly grim:

Environmental Science

FULL

College Writing I

FULL

Science of Society I

FULL

Data and Statistics

FULL

Okay, clearly all the general education classes you wanted to take are full. You'll move onto the classes that fall within your major. In my case it would look something like this:

Graphic Design I

FULL

Color Theory

FULL

Typography I

FULL

Periodical Publication

FULL

Designing for the Web

FULL

At this point you'll start to sweat. How can this be? Every class?

Desperate, you'll write down your original schedule and run over to the table of Professors to ask their permission to join their already full classes.

"Is there a Professor Rosebush here?" You'll announce to the table.

"I'm Professor Rosebush. Can I help you?" One of the tired, sad faces will reply.

"Can I join your full Typography class?"

"I'm afraid I've already signed up 2 additional students already. I don't have room for more. How about my papier-mâché class instead? There's plenty of room there."

"uhhh...no thanks. Is there a Professor Justice here?"

"No sorry, Justice left early."

"Can someone else here sign me into his Graphic Design class?"

"No, sorry. Only the course professor can do that."

WTF.

"Is there a Professor Cadence here?" You'll bark, trepidation taking over.

"I'm here" a tiny voice will reply from down the table.

"Can I join your Color Theory class? It's full and it's a required class for my major."

"Certainly. The more the merrier."

Finally. A ray of hope. Thank you Cadence. Thank you.

"Oh...wait...have you taken 'Graphic Design I' yet?" The Professor asks.

"No. I wanted to sign up for it, but, big surprise, it's full. The professor isn't here to sign me in."

"I'm afraid I can't sign you into my class either then. Graphic Design I is a prerequisite for this course."

oh....my...god...

Now is about the time you'll go join the heap of disheveled, disheartened students weeping in the corner. You'll try to regroup and come up with an alternative course schedule only to go back to the computer station and find them all full.

Rinse. Repeat. Weep.

Around 6 pm when they are about to close their doors, you will pull together some semblance of a schedule and leave—sweaty, battered, and angry. You will look over your schedule for the next year of your life and weep all the way back to your tiny dorm—your own little Trail of Tears.

Semester 1:
Papier-mâché
Intermediate Algebra I
Integrated Earth Science I
Reason and Romanticism
Remedial English Lit. II

Semester 2:
Basketweaving
Stained Glass
The History of History
German I
Women's Studies

Next year you will be one of the beggars camped outside the 'arena.' Until then, anytime a newcomer asks you when they should show up to Arena Registration, you will tell them it only takes a few minutes and to go around lunch time.

Welcome to hell.