Preparing for University: Enrolling in Courses

My first experience with course enrollment was fairly recent. It was for the second semester of Grade 11. I did it with my guidance counsellor and she kept telling me there was a possibility I’d be put on a waitlist because I was enrolling in classes way after the rest of the school had. Obviously, this scared me because I didn’t really have a backup plan for if I didn’t get the classes I needed as prerequisites for Grade 12 courses. This happened about two weeks before the second semester started so I had to wait to see if I’d gotten the classes I wanted, and, thankfully, I got 3 out of the 4 right away. I got Chemistry, English and Math before the semester started and was waitlisted for Biology. Instead of Biology, I was given a spot in the Drama class. That was a fun week. But, finally, someone dropped out of the Bio class and I rushed to get a spot. I got and I lived happily ever after. Lol, I wish.

Course enrollment is always a bit stressful because of the uncertainty of getting classes you want. In Grade 12’s course enrollment, which was the first one I did on my own, they asked for two to three alternatives, in case your preferred classes filled up without you. That made me wonder what I would have to do if I didn’t get a class that was a prerequisite for university. Would I do it in a private school? Would I do it in summer school? If I did it in summer school, would it look nice to my university or would it affect my application? Fortunately, I got all the classes I needed, plus the ones I wanted, so Grade 12 was, for the most part, a breeze.

And now, first-year undergrad course enrollment! This is what I’d been working towards since the days of no course enrollment. My previous school had fixed subjects for everyone in a certain grade, with the option being between French and Hindi. In Grade 11, you had the choice to pick a stream with another set of fixed subjects, with a little room for choice (Math or Psychology, Computer Science or Biology). But, even then, I knew it would be wise to be prepared for this year’s course enrollment. I started researching programs at UofT when I was in 8th or 9th Grade and it took me a while to work it all out, but before I came back to Toronto, I knew what courses I would take in Grade 11 and 12 and First Year. That is, all the courses that were necessary for further education in that field – I wasn’t really able to plan my electives too well because I didn’t know exactly what my school would offer at that time or if there were any teachers I should avoid at all costs. But the rest of my planning definitely gave me a good enough head start, that thinking about electives became a fun activity for me.

Regardless, the stress doesn’t really go away. In Grade 11, we did course enrollment for Grade 12 sometime in March or April. We did it on a pretty sophisticated website, with no time limit or any sense of competition of getting a class before it filled up. We had to print out our submissions and get it signed by our parents, before submitting it to the administrators. I’m just telling you this to show you what a chill process looks like. Here comes the madness that was my First-Year enrollment.

I spent my days leading up to my given registration time looking for which electives suited me. The student portal my university uses has a thing called an enrollment cart, that you add courses to, to make it easier for you to quickly enrol on Enrollment Day. My cart originally had the six required courses I’m taking (2 each for Bio, Chem and Math) and Psychology and Sociology. This was when I thought I’d be taking 4 Full Credit Equivalents (FCEs). The gist of FCEs is that you need 20 to graduate, so five each year for four years. So, if I’d continued with 4 FCEs, I would have an 80% course load, 5 FCEs being 100%. A full-year course gives you 1 FCE and a half year course, 0.5 FCE. After talking to a few seniors, I decided to take 5 FCEs and drop a course or two if things became too much.

*I realize, while writing this, that my university offers quite a few things that require explanation, so bear with me while I try to explain something that I’m quite new to, myself XD. I had to debate with myself whether I should explain my enrollment story in chronological order or club relevant things together. I’m going with the former.*

We’re encouraged to join courses, classes and groups my university offers just for first years. There are three major things targeted to my year: First-Year Seminars, First Year Ones and First-Year Learning Communities. Seminars are petite classes (compared to the 1400 people Biology class I have) of 10-30 students that have an interesting topic to be studied. The purpose of these classes is to have one more opportunity to network and make friends, especially if you find it hard to mingle with people when the class size is greater than 200. I was planning to take one called “Intelligence, Human and Artificial,” but it's timings clashed with some of my important classes. I’m not extremely familiar with Ones, but they’re pretty much a grander version of Seminars. You do a lot of fancier things, like go on trips to countries whose ancient texts you spend the whole semester trying to read or something like that. Really, Ones never looked interesting to me, so I don’t know much about them. If you’re interested in learning about the Ones UofT offers, click here.

The last one, First Year Learning Communities (FLCs), are my saviour and I will forever be grateful to them for their help. The year hasn’t even started, and they’ve already proven to be valuable. FLCs are supposed to be another chance for you to have a group of people who relate to the same things as you, making it easier to become friends. At the very least, you have someone to discuss things about your classes, because, guess what, the FLC enrols you in your important classes (for me, Bio, Chem and Math) before enrollment day, and the people in your group are probably all in the same classes! They literally enrolled me six of the classes I needed, taking more than half of my stress away. I’m a little uncomfortable with my second semester Math lecture timings (9:00 AM – 10:00 AM, three days of the week) but I’m immensely grateful for their help because they enrolled me in the lectures, practical/lab classes and tutorials that I needed, without me having to much besides fill a form and join them.

For my electives, beside Psychology and Sociology, I thought I’d join Introductory Latin and an English course, Effective Writing. But Latin would have been a completely new concept for me, and Effective Writing would be a three-hour class from 6 PM- 9 PM on Thursdays. I’m already in weekend mode by then, so that class would have been hell. It took a lot of scouring, but I’ve finally enrolled in “The Real World of Politics” and “The Immune System and Infectious Disease.” I’m excited about my electives because it’s been a while since I took Psychology, Sociology opened my eyes in Grade 12, I’ve never taken a Politics course, but the title is so intriguing and the Immunology class is a 2nd-year course so that’ll be cool. I’m satisfied with my choices. There were way too many to pick from.

Okay, that was all about my selections. Here is what happened on Enrollment Day. I had been given the time of 12:00 PM to start my enrollment, while others had 7:30 AM as their start time. So that meant a lot of lectures and tutorials would fill up before I got the chance to start my process. This is why I’m grateful for the FLC – they enrolled me in lectures, labs and tutorials that, I heard later, were so full, the waitlists were larger than the class sizes. I didn’t have to worry about six out of ten of my classes. And then two of the remaining four only had asynchronous lectures to enroll in, so my anxiety was only about the 30 student tutorials I had to enrol in for Politics and Sociology.

I don’t I can properly describe how I felt when the time on my laptop read 11:59:59. You couldn’t log in until your start time and I logged in at exactly 12:00:00. Oof the thrill! I had been conversing with a few friends I met online who had done their course enrollment, so they had access to the website. They told me how many spots they saw were left in the classes I still had to enrol in. The Politics tutorial I had selected only had 1 spot left, 10 minutes before I could log in! Thankfully, it was still like that why I logged in, but I followed my friends’ advice and enrolled in that first. The Sociology tutorial I wanted, appeared full to them but when I enrolled, that’s the one I got. It was literally a two-minute process because the FLC had taken care of my other courses. A lot of people I know were on waitlists for lectures and labs for a couple of days before more spots opened. I definitely would not have been able to handle that stress and anxiety.

Like those two minutes were more thrilling than the time I rode one of the longest roller coaster rides in Dubai. I had way too much adrenaline pumping through my body and I was scared I’d freeze and not be able to move my fingers to click on the enrol button. It was like buying tickets for a concert online that has a waiting room and it suddenly opens and you have to be faster than the thousands of other people trying to get the same seats you want. And, apparently, it doesn’t really get better. 3rd and 4th-year students also enrol in 2nd-year courses so, next year, I’ll have to compete with them ☹. And I won’t have the FLC to help me enrol before everyone else.

Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to give up my autonomy if it meant no stress about making decisions or fighting for a spot. Then I laugh and continue waiting in line. This girl will fight anyone who tries to make a move on her autonomy with a machete. I am doing everything in my power to educate myself on what’s right and what’s not, so you best believe I’m going to use what I learn in Politics and Sociology to fight for what’s right.

That is all for this part of preparing for university. I have a few more things starting this week, so hopefully, I’ll have them in post form, sometime next week. Till then, toodles. – Aarushi