It happens twice every year. It is a time that any college student dreads. It reminds us that the perfect schedule we have will soon be over, and we will move onto classes that are only offered before the sun rises or after Hillsborough Street becomes one lane on both sides.

I dread this time of year about as much as a Gilmore Girls re-run — I mean really, don’t the actors get paid millions to make these shows? Why is there only one new episode a month? It is because even though the WB makes a big fuss over its new season of shows, but fails to remind you that this new season will be constantly interrupted by last year’s episodes.

Hmmm … giving someone false expectations — that is an interesting thought. It directly relates to the topic of this article, and why most students at N.C. State dread the two times a year known as … registration.

Why is registration such a drag? I have got three words that explain it perfectly: plan of work. This source is excellent in theory. It is a tool on the NCSU homepage that allows current students to plan their entire collegiate career to feel less of a burden when planning classes. Too bad this theory has failed miserably to satisfy many students across campus.

I challenge any freshman or sophomore to plan the rest of his or her college career right now and graduate in a few years without making one change to the plan. Think it’s possible? Well, so you can sleep at night from now until graduation, I will go ahead and tell you that it is impossible.

When I was a freshman, I was told by my adviser to plan through my sophomore year, which I did. When I was a sophomore, I planned through graduation. As a rising senior, I have never been able to register for more than two classes that I had scheduled on my plan of work. Here’s why. Freshmen register last, so any class a freshman plans that has any popularity value whatsoever will be full before he or she can even think about putting “registration” in his or her planner. Sophomores, juniors and first-semester seniors plan classes they need based on what Pack Tracks says will be available for a respective semester.

As of right now, this all seems like common sense, right? Before you say, “Meghan, students are not always going to get what they want. That’s the price they pay for attending a large school.” My answer is, “Students should at least be given what they are told will be available.”

When someone is planning ahead to guarantee a stress-free registration, it would be nice if Pack Tracks didn’t say that a required course would be offered in the spring and fall when it is only offered in the spring. It’s not rocket science people. It is just like being told to expect new episodes of the WB’s best show and then given last year’s episode.

I just have to say, no wonder so many people have trouble graduating in the four years that society expects them to graduate. It is such a time constraint to plan, re-plan and settle on unwanted classes when one should only have to plan once. The whole point of planning is to get ahead and stay organized, and the plan of work currently used by NCSU students is struggling to make this happen.

It is a frustration that many students deal with and why many advisers are inundated with students who refuse to plan their courses online. While I support NCSU’s decision to force students to plan ahead, I do not support forcing students to use a system that fails them.

When a business hires a marketing firm, and that firm delivers a presentation with pieces that do not work and servers that fail, the business is not forced to use it. When NCSU students realize that the plan of work on Pack Tracks tells them wrong information and wastes their time, they are still forced to use it.

When The Princeton Review deems NCSU one of America’s Most Connected Campuses by stating that our “Academic offerings are bolstered by cutting-edge technology …” one would expect technological tools such as Pack Tracks to run without a hitch.

NCSU’s academic tools need to live up to their potential because the lack of efficiency that I witness twice a year not only wastes my time, but it wastes my fellow students’ time, my advisor’s time and the administration’s time.

In case you were wondering, Gilmore Girls is a re-run this week. Let’s hope the problem within Pack Tracks is not a re-run next semester.

E-mail Meghan at [email protected]