Written and submitted by Fatima Saher, Ryerson third year English
Now that the new school year has begun, something we can probably all relate to is the struggle to coordinate and create your schedule. Flashback to the beginning of August and the anticipation for your schedule is high, similar to your hopes for your class times, days, and professors you’ll have in the upcoming school year.
The day Ryerson schedules are released you are ecstatic. Constantly checking back for when it’ll be up; the butterflies and knots in your stomach making you more anxious.
When you finally see your schedule you suffer from some serious crushed hopes. Not what you wanted. At all.
Dreadfully, you do a detailed intake to get an enclosed grasp of all the timings and classes offered that you could possibly use to fix this mess. Then you create a master mind plan and implement an excel sheet trying to create the ultimate schedule.
An unfortunate timing or conflict forces you to compromise your four day weekend dreams and 2 pm starts. Somehow, ruthlessly, you overcome that tedious and overwhelming stage to create the next best schedule to exist.
You check your enrolment appointment and you realize that your hypothesized theory won’t even be put to test until another 10 days.
Those 10 days are brutal. You frequently check the status of your classes in the shopping cart making sure they’re still open. Slowly, but surely, some of the classes become full before you can even start enrolling. You put plan B into action, deciding you’ll sacrifice your best picks to second best.
As the awaited day approaches, you find yourself becoming anxious and nervous again, but this time for that 8 am morning. When the day comes your 10 consecutive alarms go off. Of course, you miss every single one and hastily wake up at 8:05 am. As you try to log in, Ryerson portal becomes incredibly slow; no doubt from the hundreds of other hungry students trying to beat you to your best. It takes up to a good 2 minutes just to process one click.
By the time you actually get in to RAMSS the section for the class you wanted is full. You refresh the page several times waiting for that morbid blue square to turn into a green circle. You wait, but it doesn’t budge. You silently reach out to Optimus Prime to aid you in this awaited transformation but it doesn’t happen. You realize you’re running out of time and it’s not smart to wait around on here for anything.
Nervously you put together a quick fix to the problem. Drop this, swap that, add this, forget that.
Just as you go to click the final buttons RAMSS freezes. Completely frozen at your fingertips. Frantically you feverishly begin to click everywhere and anywhere. No no no no please no! You feel the lump in your throat, the desperation in your cries.
This can’t be the end. The worst scenarios begin to form. You’ll have to take an extra semester and extra classes because of this RAMSS glitch. You’ll forever be in school. There’s must be a way! You’re sure this is some sort of bad karma from last year; you promise to politely decline the used discount flyers come September instead of ignoring them. You vow to never again curse the anatomy of Kerr Hall, fall asleep in the Cineplex theatre seats, or laugh at anybody who slips trying to walk through Lake Devo in the winter.
As if Mr. RAMSS heard your pleas, all the buttons you pressed early work into action. Within moments, order is restored in the portal!
Somehow you manage to create your schedule with its awkward breaks and weird timings but you breathe a sigh a relief!
It’s done, it’s over. No more course intentions.
Then you remember that you physically have to be present at the timings and places you desperately obtained. You cry on the inside a little but not too much, because hey, you’re tired of working full time during the summer, and plus, deep down you actually missed the Rye.
Welcome back!
