We all know, at least those of us who have been here for a little while, that registration can be a major pain. In previous years you would wait forever to sign in to register, already half asleep due to the inconvenient registration time. Registration would add a large stress load onto a student already busy preparing for midterms.

However, this year has been different – for students and faculty alike.

Personally, this was the best registration season yet. In previous years I would wait hours to be let into the website to register for classes. And even when I was typing in CRNs and submitting my desired schedule the internet moved slower than a snail – at least in my opinion. This year though I was logged in within a few seconds and done with registration within minutes.

I attribute a large part of this improvement to the changes in how we register. I wasn’t a huge fan of the change to MAVzone, but with that change there were improvements on the way we register. According to Austin Gonsalves, senior, “the access to the direct links […] makes it much quicker that it was before when you had to go through many more steps.”

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This improvement appears to have been the case for other students as well, but not necessarily for the same reasons. “Registration was generally the same for me as it has been in the past two or three semesters,” Donovan Harwell, a senior, said. “Registration went well for me. At this point, I have a strong grasp of what I need to do during registration so it was pretty straight forward for me.”

For some, the biggest change this registration season was seen from within the Departments. “I’ve seen a stronger push by the Department of Business [DoB] to help students with registration,” Harwell said. “I also heard about the Society for Women Engineers holding a registration assistance night for engineering majors to get advice from fellow students. I thought this was a great idea and would like to see more business clubs implementing this,” Harwell said.

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The Departments themselves have also seen the improvements. “From my standpoint, the process was much better this fall. Students didn’t seem to be as stressed or hurried,” Dr. Steve Norman, Business Department Head, said.

“Though the cause is tough to determine with certainty, we have been very proactive this fall in pushing information to students, such as taking care of their holds earlier rather than later when they are trying to register, sending and posting FAQs about timing and processes, letting students know of classes they may be interested in, as well as some other activities such as having our student assistants manning tables in the hallway ahead of registration with information and the FAQs, and hopefully those efforts in combination have helped students,” Norman said.

“Students did seem more calm during registration this year. Students seemed less frantic and frustrated. In past registrations, I’ve had a line out my door, but this year, it was more manageable, possibly due to some systems that we implemented as a department, or perhaps because more of the work is taking place online,” Annie Shoberg, Department of Business Administrative Assistant, said.

We are still amid registration season, but luckily, it has been so far so good.