Another semester means another opportunity to seize your desired courses for the following academic school year. Montclair State University’s registration period is more tedious than one would expect.
There are numerous obstacles one must face when planning the upcoming semester schedule, such as time conflicts of classes, classes that are required but are not enlisted for the spring semester and even the operating system not allowing one to register for the majority of their courses without a permit.
As a communication and media arts major, one is required to accomplish three different forms of electives: creative/conceptual, critical/analytical and applied/production. It is mandatory to take 12 credits in each elective, which makes up 36 credits or 12 classes to partake in.
The courses provided come from different departments within the School of Communication and Media, which varies from journalism, communication studies, television and digital media, public relations and film studies.
Degree Works shows the requirements for a communication and media arts major.
To clarify, there are a selective amount of courses from these different departments that are recommended to be taken in order for it to be considered an elective credit.
Not only is one limited to the number of courses he or she can take but they must be granted access to the majority of these classes.
By far this semester was the most tedious process I had gone through given the fact that I needed to fill out a pink form, which listed the courses I was planning to register for. The dilemma that I faced was meeting with my adviser. Between work, extracurricular activities, classes and not being on campus when my adviser was present conflicted with acquiring his signature for the list of courses.
The pink form is essentially an outline for which courses you are planning to take in the upcoming semesters alongside the previous courses. It provides a visual guidance of a “to-do” list in order to graduate on a four-year plan.
When the registration period came about, NEST prevented me from registering from 200 level courses to 300 level courses.
The courses that I selected were directly listed from Degree Works which infuriated me most of all. There should not have been any reason for a department permit in a 200-level class.
Little to no luck, my adviser was not available during the time for my registration period, which led me in a quest for any sort of assistance.
Eventually, a faculty member reached out to me and when addressing my dilemma she pointed out the pink form, told me to gather the signature from my assigned adviser, which practically led me back to square one.
Luckily, Stephanie Wood, the secretarial assistant for the School of Communication and Media, came to my rescue during these stressful times.
Wood immediately and effectively attended my request with a couple clicks of a button.
After showing her my great appreciation, I felt very remorseful toward Wood since she had a line of students outside of her office door with their registration problems and on top of that, she was consumed with her stack of pink forms.
To reduce the chaos and time from registration, revising the operating system of NEST or implementing a new system would be extremely beneficial and manageable for everyone.
Registration week at Montclair is basically a week-long version of the cornucopia scene in The Hunger Games
— wild child (@Shannon_M9800) November 15, 2017
The system would grant students the access for courses that are essentially a requirement to graduate. However, it currently denies the students from registering.
By scheduling a meeting with a counselor, filling out the pink form, gathering their signature and inputting the courses in the system for each individual student is only prolonging the process for both advisers and students.
Making students wait simultaneously has proven to not be the most efficient way of managing schedules because it causes some students to miss out on the classes they wanted to take but could not since they needed to go through an adviser.
Having a uniformed system where all communication and media arts majors are able to access their allotted elective courses without the hassle of traveling to their adviser would bring some relief to the chaos that is registration.
