How to bookbag like a boss

College is an environment within which students can afford to make some mistakes and not have to suffer the consequences for the rest of their lives. And nothing says second chance quite like bookbagging, which means the opportunity to rectify last semester’s bad class selections. Or in the case of over 50 Pratt students, rectify a poor college selection by transferring to Trinity.

With the opening of bookbagging yesterday and registration in just a couple weeks, I’m going to take the opportunity to share what is at least self-perceived as useful information to keep in mind when registering for classes.

I’m forgoing the cliché tips that you should expand your horizons and take classes with the best professors regardless of subject. You’ve already heard that advice and decided whether you’re going to heed it or ignore it. Instead, I’m going to focus on other aspects that can make or break your schedule. This advice won’t make a bad professor good or a hard class easy, but it can make the good better or at the very least make the bad not quite so bad.

Do give yourself a three-day weekend, but do schedule class for Friday. While it may be tempting to start your three-day weekend Thursday night, you’ll be regretting that decision come Sunday evening. Instead, give yourself Mondays off so that you can have a worry-free weekend without having to stay up late Sunday night to finish your work. You’ll be much more likely to get your work done on Monday when you don’t have the anticipation of the weekend hanging over your head.

Don’t audit classes. Instead of auditing a class, just enroll satisfactory-unsatisfactory. There’s no motivation to learn anything if you audit a course, but if you enroll satisfactory-unsatisfactory you’ll be motivated to keep up with class enough to learn about the subject without having to stress before exams or worry if you’re too busy to do the homework this week. It may seem stressful to still have to worry about a grade, but what could you possibly learn from the class if you can’t even manage a C-?

Do take physical education classes (half-credit and full-credit courses). These are not your high school P.E. classes where you were graded on how quickly you could run the mile (not a mile, THE mile). Physical education classes aren’t too demanding and they force you to do some physical activity with regularity, which is never a bad thing. Also consider the graded courses if you’re lucky enough to have an early enrollment even though you won’t get an ALP or QS out of these classes. Actually, only enroll in physical educations classes—you won’t be able to graduate, but you’ll be a much happier person.

Don’t take an 8:30 a.m. course if it’s not on the same campus you’re living on. There are 8:30 a.m. courses and then there are 8:30 a.m. courses on another campus—a whole other breed of evil. The last thing you want to do after rolling out of bed at an ungodly hour is to do it 15-20 minutes earlier and then have to wait for the bus. This even applies to so-called morning people who claim to be unbothered by having to get up before the sun rises.

Do enroll in five courses during drop/add (you can only enroll in four credits during your registration window). You may think that you’ve picked the perfect schedule and that you’re truly interested in every course you’ve enrolled in. That is until you show up on the first day of class, and it turns out that your “easy class” has a mandatory 50,000-word essay—not so interesting all of a sudden. Better to already be enrolled in your backup rather than find that it’s already full and have to settle for some sorry class that no one else wanted. Also, if you know that one of the five classes you’re most interested in won’t fill up before drop/add, which is after all undergraduates enroll, wait until drop/add to enroll in it to ensure you get into all five of the classes you want to.