Registration for the spring 2012 semester has begun and, once again, it is a frustrating process.

The Northern Star Editorial Board already wrote about the huge problem of departments only offering some of the courses in the course catalogue; however, there are more problems with the registration process than that.

Even when departments offer the courses that they say are available in the course catalogue, it can still be almost impossible to actually fit them into one schedule.

Sophomore elementary education major Brooke Meredith is a semester behind in her program because she couldn’t fit the required general education classes for her major into one schedule.

“I will graduate in four and a half years instead of four,” Meredith said. “I couldn’t take Physical Education for Children because it conflicted with other classes that I had to take. If I tried to fit it in, I would have fallen further behind.”

There are too many students that fall behind in their programs because the classes they need to take aren’t offered at times when they can actually take them. It really sucks for students that have to stick around and pay for an extra semester of school just because the classes they needed weren’t able to fit into one schedule.

Departments should be more aware of this problem and try and offer classes at a variety of different times and on different days so more students can take them and not fall behind. Meredith said even offering some of the general education classes as a once a week night class would have helped her stay on pace with the program.

Another huge problem I have with scheduling classes is all of these Monday, Wednesday, Friday classes. I don’t want class on Fridays, and I don’t know anyone that likes having class on Fridays either.

Offering more Monday, Wednesday options would give students greater flexibility in scheduling and would reduce the number of days that we would have to travel to NIU. This would greatly help commuter students and students that have jobs at home on the weekends (like me).

I work most Friday and Saturday nights. This semester, I would have been able to go home a day earlier and work Thursday nights as well, but one of my required classes was only offered as a Monday, Wednesday, Friday option.

I missed out on a lot of hours of work just because the Psychology Department wouldn’t make my required class available as two day a week option.

Sophomore accountancy major Dean Tanglis doesn’t like Monday, Wednesday, Friday classes either. He said the worst part for him was that the Friday session became a waste of time.

Tanglis said when his Math 211 class met Fridays, they basically just took a quiz and left. He said it would have been much easier and wouldn’t have wasted so much time if it was just a Monday, Wednesday class.

The various departments at NIU should try really hard to offer more of a variety of times for their classes. Trying to space the general education classes throughout the day, and offering more Monday, Wednesday options would help enable students to graduate on time, not miss out on work and not waste time on Fridays.