Maybe I shouldn't have started this blog now, not with everything that's been going on.

Yesterday when we left the school there were notices along the hall from the Registrars Office that on Monday, May 24, the first day of classes, there will be class lists posted in the lobby that students have to sign to choose their sections for the subjects they are enrolled in.

Those who are not enrolled in the classes they sign up for will be disregarded. Same with those who sign after the limit of each section has been reached.

This is the same way they did it for the third term, although back then they started the week before classes started.

It was a little confusing, particularly for the lab classes, when people would sign up even though they weren't enrolled yet. It also gave rise to a lot of internal arrangements for teachers who handled several sections of the same subject, like me and David with mechanics and the lab.

Students would just show up on the schedule that was more convenient for them.

Another apprehension I have is that the announcement was not just for the upperclassmen, but may also be for the freshmen. That not only means that there are several more subjects and sections to coordinate, but also that the freshmen will be clueless and may have to be guided as to how to sign up for the timeslots they want.

I tentatively have an 8am class scheduled. I'm already anticipating not giving any important reminders and class policies if I believe that most of the students that will be enrolled there will be showing up on the second day of classes.

I'm also worried about people who will not be able to get into the sections they want if it is the only schedule that is free for them. I hope that the limit to the number of students is padded so that they could still get into those classes because they have already paid for them. It's more convenient for the students than to force them to drop the subject.

Up until yesterday there were still some students who were going for academic advising, but these were mostly for subjects that they had failed for last term, particularly mechanics lab. I had to turn down all of them, giving the reason that for the non-engineering students, mechanics lab is not a prerequisite to other subjects and thus need not be taken right away.

Another reason I gave was that the students were already at 19+ units, and that's already including a P.E. subject and a science and/or computer lab subject.

Lastly, we also had to look at the Grade Point Average of the students for the previous terms. The consistency of the students' performance with regards to the number of units taken and their grades for that term also played a part in determining if the student can handle a large workload or not.

Actually, it can be summed up in the standing policy that unless they were originally slotted to take subjects they can't anymore because of failed prerequisites, the assessment stands as is, and can only be changed by adding subjects which can be done at a later time.