At most colleges, finals week is the most stressful week of out the year. However, at Fairfield, registration is the time of year that sends chills down student’s spines and gives them the most anxiety headaches.
When asked to recall registration during his time at Fairfield, Alumni Ryan Washington ’02, declared, “Oh, it sucks!”
Rob DelliBovi, another member of the class of ’02 recalled, “It’s stressful because you don’t want to get screwed, you have to work to get the classes and teachers that you want to get.”
A major selling point for many students who are here is Fairfield’s small class sizes. With so many classes requiring pre-requisets, a student may fall extremely behind because of a high lottery number.
“My advisor was useless because of the low availability of classes that I wanted to take,” said DelliBovi, a Communication major.
For business students however, with group advising, many never discuss their options with their advisor. “You just had to meet with a professor and they didn’t know your personality, so they couldn’t really help you,” remembers Washington, who double majored in Management and Info Systems. “If you needed to know what classes you had to take you had to do the research yourself, and with the online registration you would not find out until after you had signed up for classes that you didn’t even need them,” he continued.
However, it’s not all complaints if you have questions you have to do the research yourself, or track down your advisor. That is what transfer student, Tom Dehnel ’05, found himself doing. “It was easy to schedule an appointment with my advisor, and now I feel prepared to register, but only because I went and asked questions. No information was presented to me,” Dehnel said.
Terese Carlozzi ’04 did not feel that there is not enough direction presented to you from advisors. “I think I’m prepared because I know what I want to take, the decisions you have to make are up to you.”
As for actual registration day, the long lines of the past have been avoided. “We have someone at the Business school registering those students, and all the other large majors are divided up, people coming in a few at a time but there are no long lines this year,” commented Pat Newall, assistant to the university registrar for registration and scheduling.
“We’re trying to make it as easy as we can with Pipeline registration; most other schools did it before we did. It gets the students more involved,” Newall said. She continued, “I’ve been here for 25 years and I think we’ve advanced immensely in that time.”
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