<p>I loved Orientation, the shows they put on were all-right, everything seemed productive and useful in some way... with is exceptional for an orientation that lasts over three days. I made plenty of new friends and acquaintences, and learned alot more about my classes.</p>
<p>But things really came tumbling down on day three, I had my pre-advisor meeting. It was great, my pre-advisor for the McCombs School of Business was Michael Bird, he was an awesome guy, extremely supportive and informative. I told him my #1 goal for freshman year was getting into the BHP Sophomore year. He immediately launched into a thorough discussion with me... and we formed a schedule that seemed both intuitive and extremely effective at putting me on the fast track for my major and getting excellent credentials for the BHP. He suggested some FIGs, including an excellent leadership-oriented FIG that would not only build up my leadership skills (important for the BHP, supposedly) in a situation where the BHP is asking for leadership skills from Freshmen who will have very few leadership opportunities.</p>
<p>More importantly, this FIG, and some others he suggested, fit perfectly in my schedule. Most FIG's included M408K or PSY301 or ECO304K among others and since I had tested out of them I was ineligible to join them... this left me with a few select FIGs that included philosophy and communications courses... which were ALSO important because both of those classes were pretty much closed unless you were in a FIG.</p>
<p>I was really happy leaving my pre-advising meeting, I had my schedule totally laid out, my FIG picked out, and everything looked like smooth riding... until I get to my advising meeting.</p>
<p>My FIG was closed... all FIGs were, unless I was taking Biology or Chemistry in combination with something totally unintuitive. The worst part was how clueless she was (I was told she was one of the more experienced advisors), she spent half of my advisor meeting fumbling through the FIGs only to realize they were closed... the leadership FIG that I desperately needed to complete my schedule? It had 13/20 people in it... but since some technicality prevented them from filling spots in a FIG that people had dropped, I wasn't able to join it.</p>
<p>The ending of the meeting was almost pathetic, she was trying to arrange one-class FIGs for me... "What about MC tech, you can drop the advanced Calculus and just take Philosophy!"... I just sort of nodded half-heartedly. I get to the library to start laying out my schedule and sure enough... alot of my classes were flat out CLOSED unless I had a FIG, and even if spots do open up tommorow, my last name starts with S....</p>
<p>All the classes that will open up will benefit those people who were graced with last names before mine, my class situation is only going to get worse.</p>
<p>For those of you who didn't want to read through my whining, here's the summary... I'm entering UT with enough credits-by-exam to pass to qualify as a "Junior" credit wise, but because of the ridiculous manner in which registration and course scheduling occurs, I'll be lucky to get into some of the classes required by my major until I'm a sophomore... In order to complete my schedule I'm actually having to schedule classes that I've ALREADY TESTED OUT OF... just so I can fill my schedule to have enough class hours in areas relevent to my major... sure I testing out of Psychology, but unless a Sociology/Anthropology spot opens up by 11 tommorow... I just might end up taking Intro to Psychology anyways...</p>