-Alisa Agozzino
At the university I work at we are on a quarter system. This means we have 10 weeks of classes every term before our week of finals and then a week of break. The good news is that for those classes that are less than par, it’s over quickly. Bad news is that just when you and the students start to get the hang of the class, it’s over.
The main problem I have with our quarter system is the endless registration. We meet with students 3, sometimes 4, times a year (depending if they chose to take summer quarter). I love see the advisees. I like to find out how their current quarter is treating and if they do have problems, we are able to deal with them before the withdraw deadline. However meeting with these students takes anywhere from a half to a full hour of my time—for two weeks out of every quarter. Combine this with hitting right at midterm time every quarter, it becomes very time consuming and frustrating. I want to give every student the time they rightfully deserve (especially at a private university that stresses student/mentor interaction). Yet with a three course load and research I am ready to pull my hair out.
So as we enter week 5 here in the spring quarter, I sighed aloud today when I arrived at my mailbox with the colored sheet with all my students registration times and pin numbers to register. Here we go again.
