(In which I, as usual, talk about a bunch of things I did this week, but eventually get around to course registration, which I suppose is the main topic of this post.*)

Well, my ninth week was not nearly as nasty as my eighth week--probably because I had two English projects to do last week and no English projects to do this week.

I did have to write a one-page story in French (which I wrote about a guy looking through all the capitals of Europe for his lost dog). Also, math is speeding up quite a bit--we just derived a method today for how to find the work done by a field of force vectors along a curve that moves through it (this has something to do with the mysterious "line integral," which I am still trying to wrap my head around).

But, other than that, things have calmed down. I have time to do things other than homework, like sleep, eat, communicate with other human beings, go to birthday parties, listen to orchestra concerts, play Hearts with my floor, and write Chelsea 11:17 skits.

(This time at Chelsea, in case you're curious, I didn't have time to write an epic alliterative play. I made a play called "The Script Virus" which consisted of a one-page script with instructions to walk onto the stage and then pantomime a dramatic death scene--but not before handing the script to another audience member, who would then become part of the play and have to follow the script also. This created, as I intended, a chain reaction of fake deaths, which would have eventually "killed" the entire audience if the people in charge of Chelsea didn't announce that it was over. Some audience members tried to escape their fates; one person ran out of her aisle and up a ladder before being handed the script, and another infectee attempted to avoid having to spread the virus by eating the script instead of reading it. I was gratified to see my theatrical plague met with appropriate fear.)

I also have now registered for my Second Trimester classes. The registration process at Carleton is very unique--you are given a day and a time (mine was 9:15 PM last Monday) and you type the classes you want to take into the registration page at The Hub (the official-businessish part of carleton.edu) BEFORE that time. Then, when Minnesota reaches that time, you and a bunch of other people who got the same time slot are suddenly able to hit the send button and register for your classes.

Whoever hits the button first gets into the class first. If someone is faster with the mouse button than you, you have to go back, quickly change your "Register" to "Waitlist", pick another class, and register for that instead.

The best strategy, of course, is to have a clock perfectly synced with whatever clock governs The Hub, and to hit the button at exactly the right time, since hitting the button before your time comes brings you to a little page that tells you it isn't time for you to register yet, and you have to go back and try again, thus losing precious seconds. However, since I don't have such a clock, my strategy consists of hitting "Send," going to that little screen, hitting the "Back" button, and then hitting "Send" again, over and over. This works pretty well.

I had no trouble getting into French II and Linear Algebra. I just missed the last spot in Professor Shuffelton's English Literature I, thus becoming the first person on the waitlist. It would be fairly easy, I think, for me to tell Professor Shuffelton that I really want to be in his class and thus possibly get in (which is one of the many ways to get off a waitlist), or for me to take Tuesday-Thursday English Literature I instead (which wouldn't be THAT bad for my schedule) but I have started to get excited about the class I signed up for as a backup to English Lit I: Intro to Classical Studies. That won't be offered next trimester, and English Lit I will, so now is the time for me to take Classics if I want to take it this year. I hear it is an amazing class, and it'll be good for a Humanities requirement. So I think that, though I COULD probably get all the classes I originally wanted, I now want a different class. I'll give Classics a try!

So the moral of this story, I think, is that no matter how low your registration number is, you can definitely get into classes you want to take, even if you don't devise a strategy to beat out everyone else by clicking and refreshing as fast as possible.

Well, given that it is rather late, we've already come to a nice moral in today's post, and I'm going to compete in a campus Problem Solving Tournament tomorrow, I'm afraid it is time for this post to end. Goodnight!

*Okay, look, actually this post does not have a main topic, and in fact is not really about anything in particular. But next weekend will be right before finals, and then I will have a nice single topic to focus on. Just you wait.