2L scheduling: a cautionary tale

So, 1L. That happened.

At most law schools, you don’t get to choose any of your classes as a 1L. You get put into a section (Section 2 RAWKS!) and your section (mine was about 50ish people) takes all the same classes together for a whole year. I do think at some schools you may get an elective or some limited choice, but generally the decisions about classes are mostly out of your hands. The classes that you’ll take as a 1L vary from school to school, too. First semester we had Torts, Contracts, Civil Procedure, and Legal Practice; second semester was Property, Criminal Law, Constitutional Law, and Legal Practice. Some schools make you do two semesters of some of those classes and then you take some of the others as an upperclassman. At my school we only had a semester of everything except Legal Practice, and for that I’m exceedingly thankful for the most part, though I did really like Civil Procedure and I wish it had been a year-long course.

So, 2L. That’s about to happen.

It’s abundantly clear to me now why they take all the schedule-making decisions away from you as a 1L, because making a schedule? and choosing classes? and actually getting into them? all while keeping your eventual exam schedule in mind? It’s freaking hard. Like insane, even.

First, in early April, they release the class schedules and the exam schedules for the upcoming summer session plus the next fall and spring semesters. We register for all of them at once. I have a general no-summer-school policy, so I ignored that part. I printed out all the schedules and then I made two spreadsheets. YES, I DID. I MADE SPREADSHEETS. What? You guys don’t do that? Weirdos. Everybody knows that only the smartest of the smartest people in the world are also spreadsheet makers. These are facts.

Oh, also, coincidentally enough, the scheduling information is released right about the time you might want to start thinking about cracking down and studying for exams. Of course, if you’re busy having an OCDgasm over spreadsheets and scheduling details, you can’t think about anything else, especially nothing as mundane as exams. So there’s that.

So I worked and worked on my magical scheduling spreadsheets (one for fall, one for spring) and I plugged in all sorts of different possible classes that I might want to take, then I entered in when all my exams would be, and I found some conflicts, and I adjusted, and I adjusted some more, and then I color coded the spreadsheets, and then I made the Most Perfect Schedule in all the history of the world, forever and ever, AMEN. I had all sorts of possible combinations of classes that could and could not be taken together because of the exam schedule. For example, I didn’t want to take two classes who had exams on the same day. Um, no thanks. But everything was color coded, people. It was a beautiful thing.

And then. Chaos.

The (then) 2Ls got a week to register for classes before we, the (then) 1Ls, got to. It works like this. After you finish your 1L year, you have 29 hours (15 first semester, 14 second semester). You need 90 hours to gradumuate. Of the 61 hours you need to take as a 2L and 3L, 26 of those hours are advanced required classes. And of those 26 advanced required hours, you have to take at least 15 of those hours as a 2L. So complimicated. We were advised not to take too many of those 26 required hours as a 2L and to save some of the 4-hour classes for our 3L year, or else we might be stuck taking like eight 2-hour classes one semester just to get all the necessary hours to gradumuate. But they let the 2Ls register first so they can be sure to get into all the classes they’ll need during their 3L year.

Still with me? Hey, wake up! I’m still talking. Rude.

So, needless to say, by the time the 2Ls had chosen all their classes, my Most Perfect Schedule lay shivering, naked and beaten, left for dead. I had to start completely over. By this time, I really REALLY should have been studying for finals, but ZOMG MY BABY SCHEDULE NEEDS ME. I worked and worked and color coded and worked some more, and finally I came up with a schedule that, while not ideal, was Tolerable.

And then. More chaos.

I sat at my computer with all the code numbers of the classes I wanted already typed in, just waiting for the clock to strike midnight so I could hit SUBMIT. I waited and waited. I drank some beer. I drank some more beer while I waited some more. Then, finally, midnight. I clicked on SUBMIT and waited for the next screen to pop up, which would tell me which classes I’d gotten into, then I’d consult my handy-dandy spreadsheet to see what alternatives to try instead of the ones I didn’t get into, and then in a matter of moments I’d have a Schedule. Not a Most Perfect Schedule, mind you, but a Tolerable Schedule nonetheless.

I waited and I waited. I drank some more beer while I waited some more. The little round circle timer/busy signal thingy just kept going around and around, like those chaser Christmas tree lights or the chaser lights on a Vegas marquee. I waited and I waited. More beer. More waiting. Still with the chasing strobe lights. Finally, I opened a new tab and checked Facebook out of sheer boredom. Every single person from law school that I’m friends with on Facebook was complaining about the same thing. Massive failure from the school’s server, apparently. Since I had an 8am class the next morning and it was already almost 2am and I was pretty buzzed after all that intoxicating waiting, I decided to just leave the chasing lights running and go to bed and hope for the best.

So when I got to class the next morning, I found out that a ton of people had stayed up like all night waiting for the chasing lights circle to go away. Of a class of over 100 people (two sections combined), maybe 20 of us showed up for Property at 8:00 the next morning. Rawr. That professor was hyper-vigilant about taking roll, too, but because there were so many people absent, he decided not to bother. So basically I showed up to class for NOTHING. AT 8:00. RAWRRR.

Anyway, all the people who stayed up all night also took all the classes I had lined out on my Tolerable Schedule. Not only that, but they submitted their names for the waiting lists for all the other good classes that had been taken by the 2Ls. Basically, I had to start mostly all the way over AGAIN. My Tolerable Schedule became my Schedule of Last Resort. I made changes here and there over the summer, getting into previously full classes when spots opened up. Then they released the list of classes that will be taught by adjunct/visiting professors, and those classes opened up for registration on Wednesday morning (yesterday) at 9am.

And guess what, you guys? After much weeping and gnashing of teeth, I’m happy to state that while I don’t have the Original Most Perfect Schedule, I do have an Almost Perfect Schedule that I’m pretty happy about.

Fall 2010 (16 hours)
MW 8:00 Criminal Practice Skills (2 hours) (squeeeeeee!!)
MTWR 9:00 Commercial Law (4 hours, advanced required class)
MWF 12:00 Creditor’s Rights & Bankruptcy (3 hours)*
MTW 2:00 Criminal Procedure (3 hours, advanced required class)
MW 3:00 Business Torts (2 hours)
TR 3:00 Entertainment Law (2 hours)

*I’m on the waiting list for Texas Pretrial Procedure, and if I get in there, it will take the place of Bankruptcy in this time slot and on the exam schedule. I know you were wondering this.

Spring 2011 (16 hours)
MTWR 9:00 Income Tax (4 hours, advanced required class)
TR 10:30 Family Law (3 hours)
MTWR 2:00 Evidence (4 hours, advanced required class)
M 3:00 Texas Juvenile Law (2 hours)
TR 4:00 Legal Malpractice (3 hours)

So. It’s kindof a lot of hours, or at least a lot of classes because of the 2-hour ones, but I think I’d rather load up as a 2L and have an easier courseload as a 3L than the other way around. I’m 100% sure that by the time I’m a 3L my motivation for studying will be deep into the negative numbers. I mean, farther into the negative numbers than where my motivation already dwells, which is somewhere between -23,498,723,498 and -23,498,735,745, give or take 10,000 or so.

So, to summarize, there are four morals of this story:

1. Spreadsheets are for smart people. If you don’t like them and use them as a problem-solving tool for life’s problems, you should start. Or else you won’t ever experience an OCDgasm, which is quite an experience.
2. Don’t think you can drink enough to make the chasing lights timer/busy signal thingy go away. You can’t outlast it.
3. If you show up to an 8am class after a major server crash during the registration process, resulting in nobody being able to register until 5am at the earliest, where the professor normally takes roll every single morning without fail, you will be in the minority, and you will not be rewarded for your attendance. Rather, you will be reminded that sometimes it just doesn’t pay to be responsible/conscientious/neurotic.
4. There may be times when you will eat your words. For example, if you loudly proclaim to your friends and acquaintances multiple times that “never again after this will you ever EVAR see me at this law school for an 8:00 class,” you can be 100% sure that the one class you desperately want to take (Criminal Practice Skills) will be offered at 8am, thus presenting a horrible dilemma wherein you must choose between your future career and your current sanity and sleep cycle. Of course, I myself have never eaten any words, but you might have to.