Registration breakdown

Even with over 30,000 students, registering for classes shouldn’t be akin to waiting in a bread line.

For students with 80 plus credits, registration opened up on Oct. 31 at 12:00 a.m. Many students, including myself, were registering for their final semester here at UVU. They will be graduating in the spring.

Like gamblers on payday, eagerly flocking to a casino door, my fellow seniors and I jumped online, waiting for the clock to pass its last second before midnight.

But just as Cinderella’s spell was broken at the stroke of twelve, I anxiously turned from a giddy enchanted child, about to receive the promise of a long awaited gift, to salivating monster as time passed and my virtual door remained closed.

All the excitement of opening registration, choosing my final semester’s classes and staying up half the night to do it only heightened the stress. I already felt quite like a zombie. I clicked and repeatedly refreshed my web browser. I started impatiently praying that I could log on to the registration page and sign up for the classes that would ensure I have a diploma in my hands come April.

But instead of getting divine intervention, I felt like a sinner at the gates of Heaven. I knocked forlornly, logging in over and over, just to be denied. Rather than meeting saintly, glowing angels, I was met by “Error Code” after “Error Code,” which popped up on my screen.

Some of the courses I need are only being offered in the spring. I began to ask myself “What if someone takes my classes and I can’t graduate for another year?”

Worse than delaying graduation would be facing the daunting and dreaded Waitlist. I’d been down that road before; I didn’t want to do that again.

Every semester, registering for classes feels like being swept up in a wild stampede. My question is, if this is not UVU’s first rodeo, then why all the clowning around?

Utah Valley University, in some form, has been around for about 70 years. It’s had over one hundred of these registration seasons to weather.

And while the method of registration has changed through the years as technology and the institution itself has evolved, the current method of registration is not so new that it should incur so many problems.

Yes, this is the largest university in the state. It has 30-some thousand students. With that gargantuan of a student body, there are going to be some understandable glitches. However, surely with the advances in technology and at least a few years of experience with online registration, technical bugs could have been worked through. Registration this year should have been a breeze.

Read: It should have been a breeze. Should.

But many nervous juniors and seniors can attest to the fact that it was not. The simple fact that many of us could not even get onto UVLink tells me there’s a problem.

The difference between a working registration system and one that is dysfunctional at practically every turn is the difference between a life moving forward and a life that stagnates where it stands. Aside from the pathologically immature, no one wants to stay in college forever.

We want to earn our degrees.

We want to go out in the world and see what we can do with them. Mostly, we don’t want to languish in academic limbo one more semester than we have to.

We don’t want to take blow-off classes for the sole sake of being in school. We don’t want to have drop out, only to come back in a semester or two when that coveted last credit is finally available.

Granted, most of us juniors and seniors will end up in the classes we need. But what will happen when sophomores begin attempting to register for classes? Even sadder, what will happen if even the freshmen are finding it troublesome to get into the basic pre-requisites that they need?

I wonder if they will have the same problem that we did. Will there be such a flood of people that the website cannot handle it? And after hours of trying and trying, roving UVU’s website like a starving dog, will there even be any crumbs left?

I know we are bursting at the seams here at UVU. Frankly that is something I am very proud of. I appreciate the role that this university plays in our community. However, there has to be a more efficient way to register for classes – or at the very least, a less stressful way.