Trying to find available classes five days after they've started is like picking through the remnants of a piñata after dozens of sugar-crazed children have already mutilated its sad, broken carcass: all that's left is gum wrappers, paper mache innards, and some Good & Plenties. (Because let's face it- no one under the age of 70 actually likes Good & Plenties.)
Of course, it doesn't help that the school's new course enrollment system was designed to be as difficult to use as possible while maintaining the appearance of simplicity. It's like it was created by a rocket scientist with the purpose of being used by kindergardeners. Can we please go back to the days of carbon paper and abacuses? (Abacai? I should look that up.) I would suggest they offer a course on how to use the online enrollment system, but I probably wouldn't be able to figure out how to sign up for it.
At this point, all the good classes are taken and we're left with the dregs, unless you can find a sleeper class, a feat I have accomplished only once in my college life. Down to the wire, it looks like my options are a Slavic Folklore course called "Ritual Demonology" (You didn't even know we had a Slavic Folklore department, did you?), SWAG 2559: Women's Lives in Myth and Reality ("SWAG" = Studies in Women and Gender), and an Intro to Urdu course. As fun as it would be to be able to say, "Why, yes, I speak Urdu. Do you Urdu too?" I'm leaning towards the SWAG class if only because "SWAG" is such a fun course mnemonic (not to be confused with "pneumonic," which means of or relating to pneumonia- fun fact).
On a sadder, less grammatical note, allow me to share with you the unfortunateness of my textbook-buying experience this semester. The university bookstore hates students. We are nothing but walking, talking dollar signs to them, and they rip us off at every opportunity. This year I decided to take matters into my own hands and buy my books online. (Radical, I know.) Regrettably, this was also the year I decided I did not want to be in the Education School. If you haven't connected the dots yet, I shall explain.
The bookstore had posted a list of ten books that were "required" for my Content Area Reading class in the Ed School. Wanting to be prepared for the first week of class, I went online and purchased all of these books (used) from various sellers. Then I went to the first class for this course, at which the professor started out by saying, "I hope none of you bought all these books. Did you?" (I learned the hard way that you should NOT raise your hand at questions like this, even if you think you should.) She proceeded to explain that we only needed to read ONE book from the list of ten, and that the bookstore was supposed to indicate this on the printout. (Which, apparently, they did, but in some kind of sneaky bookstore code so I couldn't understand it.) I was only slightly concerned by this situation seeing as I had, for the most part, already resolved to withdraw from the Education School.
And so I await the deluge of individually shipped text books that will soon be piling up in my mailbox (which, it's worth noting, is about .3 miles and 75 stairs away from my dorm room), mocking me with every single e-mail notification of their arrivals. Dear World, learn from my mistakes: Don't buy ten books that you can't return for a class that you haven't been to yet.