Registration has come upon us again, and with it the everso confused students. But for your (and my) convenience, I have discovered some easy steps to making the registration process incredibly easy for all declared students. The only catch? A bit of effort is required.

The first step to making the registration process blissfully easy and quick for all parties involved is to find yourself a course catalog. Remember, there are different catalogs for different years. You need to find out which catalog years you are registered under and then get the correct book. If you don’t want to deal with a physical catalog, all the course catalogs are online. Go to uwplatt.edu, then in the list of links on the left side of the page, click on “Academic Programs.” Next click on “University Catalogs.”

Within the catalog, find your major and minor and make a list of every class you are going to need to graduate. Be sure to write down what prerequisites are required for every course. I got messed up because I waited to take Survey of Imaging. Because it’s a prerequisite for another class which is a prerequisite for another class, I had to take it this coming semester if I wanted an imaging media minor. Unfortunately for me, the scheduling didn’t work out and I’ve had to drop the minor. Don’t let this happen to you; learn from my foolishness!

After you’ve taken care of your major and minor classes, go and look at the general education requirements for all students. It is going to take you a lot longer to decide which of these to take since there are so many of them. Students beware: pay careful attention to the fact that you have to take two courses in the “same discipline” for the social science and liberal arts requirements, and remember that your natural science courses must be in two different disciplines. I have friends who have had to take more classes than necessary because of this oversight.

So now that you have your list, go into PeopleSoft or Hasker’s UW-Plattevile program and check to see which classes are offered for the coming semester. Your selection of potential courses has been limited exponentially, and suddenly planning a schedule has become much easier.

After you’ve picked out classes to take for this fall, the best thing to do is to find out when these classes are offered. Check the catalog again: a lot of the courses say when they are offered in their descriptions. If it’s not there, though, or if it sounds fishy, get your hands on a course rotation list for each department with which you need to take classes. The department is required to have a course rotation list detailing when every course is offered three years out. If it’s is not posted in the department’s offices, e-mail the chair of that department or your adviser. Then write down what semesters these courses are offered. This will prevent missed opportunities, like my imaging media minor fiasco.

Once you’ve got your master list of classes, you will be absolutely set. You will know when to expect a course to show up on PeopleSoft and you can make sure your academic life runs more smoothly. Registration made easy. Bonus? Your adviser will love you.