Extremely random thing that I am worrying about for S25 this week (side benefit of still being furloughed, I am finding ALL KINDS OF TIME in which to worry about very random things) -
Next Monday is when S25 can register for Spring classes. While he was home a few weeks ago he made a first and second choice plan for classes to register for. He doesn’t have a ton of variability in his schedule generally, as there are a lot of mandatory classes for his major. This year he has some, because he’s gotten AP credit for a few classes, so he was able to move a few later classes to be earlier (not time of day later, later in college semesters). Because he knows I seriously geek out about course planning, we sat together to build his plans.
I have made him a lovely excel chart that shows his courses three ways: (1) the way they are listed on the requirements to graduate sheet, which is basically clumped by subject matter; (2) the way they are listed on the sample four year course progression sheet; and (3) a tentative four year schedule specific to him. The first two options have some general categories, like “non-literature humanities course” and “global challenges course” and the ever so precise “upper level elective in your major”. I have also annotated option 1 (the courses required for graduation list) with what class he’s taken that meets that requirement - whether it was an AP course or once he’s officially taken it in college. (I’ll note that Clemson has a data view that students can log in to that shows this matching and it’s incredibly useful. My S22’s school does not have such a thing. If I had realized Clemson would do it for them I probably wouldn’t have bothered but oh well, at least it makes all the info visible in one place.) For the schedule specific to him, a lot of the non-specific requirements aren’t filled out, it just says “upper level elective” or whatever. But I have listed options and optimal times for some of them for him to consider - like if he wants to take the drone course it’s only offered in the fall every other year, so he has to take it fall of junior year or he can’t take it (won’t have the prereqs done earlier), if he wants to do a modified study abroad, the only way he can do that is if he takes a specific course spring semester of his junior year so he can go over spring break for a short trip abroad (nothing else will let him meet the credits he needs. Anyhoo, I full on know that I go overboard with this stuff, but both of my kids have been happy to have me lay out options for them to look at and think about and I work hard to just make sure they have easy to access information and choices, and to not drive the train.
Anyhoo, registration for the Spring is on Monday, and he has a plan. Great. Over the weekend when he called he mentioned that he needed to set up a meeting with his advisor before he’d be allowed to register. Ok. He said he was going to email soon, which sounded good. In my head I’m thinking - this person advises 54 freshmen. They are going to need to meet with all of you and who knows how much else they have going on. You’d better send that email soon. But I was trying to note push - this is his place to adult. If he doesn’t sign up for classes early, then he’ll get a crap schedule with crap class times. It’s unlikely that what he wants will be unattainable (well, the one non-literature humanities elective slot is a small class and the first choice may be full, but he has multiple backup options) just maybe at bad times. Anyway, I’ve been trying to let him do it.
But he and I were texting Monday night while watching the sad sad Commanders football game, and I asked if he’d reached out to the advisor. And he told me he couldn’t schedule a meeting until he had a chart with all four years of classes planned to show her. No problem, I said. Remember, you HAVE A CHART. I reminded him of the excel chart and told him to just copy the column specific to him, it’s all done. I was 100% congratulating myself for doing this absurd work and making his life just a smidge easier.
He replied that he can’t use that, it’s part of an assignment in his intro to construction management class (the professor is the advisor for all the freshmen in the major), and he needs to make a gantt chart. OK, that’s fine, good real world learning opportunity. But if he must meet with her before registering, and the chart isn’t due yet, and the chart must be ready to schedule a meeting with her, and she has to meet with all 54 of them, when on earth will she have time to meet with them all before Monday?
I’m purposefully not following up with S25 to see if he’s made the gantt chart, and I’m letting this go. But it is driving me insane (largely because I have nothing else to do right now but perseverate).
Sigh. In other What Else Does Kate Do When Crazy news, I am also making a gigantor google sheet chart for my S22 with links to jobs he can apply to for post-graduation. It’s a crap job market for new grad engineers right now. He had a second round interview yesterday that we were all hopeful about, but he came out of it less enthused about the company than he went in, and didn’t sound like he felt great about how it went. Sigh.
