Between You and What You Want There is at Least One Line

Arena scheduling: it sounded to me liked I’d be pushed into the middle of a giant colloseum-like arena, thrown a sword, and would have to fight my way through counselors, students and department chairs. Champion wins all: the choice of courses, electives and PE classes she wants. Unfortunately, Arena scheduling was nowhere near as glorious.

I arrived right after school ended, and there was already a line forming to get into the cafeteria,where the scheduling was going on. That was the first line I was in, starting at 2:20 PM. Fortunately that line moved rather quickly and I was soon able to enter a second line: the line to get to my counselor. This was much more tricky, if only because I couldn’t tell which line was the one with my counselor at the end of it. Like one of those game shows where one of three doors has the prize behind it, and you have to pick one. Well, it wasn’t three, it was about twelve, and they weren’t those “easy open it’ll take two seconds for me to turn the handle” doors, they were long, long lines.

Estimates ranged, but the general consensus was that over half of the school’s 1500 rising sophomores, juniors and seniors were at arena scheduling, stuffed into that hot cramped cafeteria. Out of those, probably another sixty or seventy percent had problems with their PE class. It’s rather ironic that I had to wait in so many lines when I don’t even like PE! While I was waiting in line for my guidance counselor, a line of about ten people slithered through the crowded place. “Migrating lines!” I exclaimed to Helen, who was standing across from me.

Once I did reach the front of the line I was in, it took about three minutes to straighten out which courses I wanted to take and check whether they were in the right blocks. I joked with my counselor, mentioning how it was akin to waiting at the airport (though about three times worse). She took it the opposite way—”Oh yes! I love that analogy! Like you’re waiting, but it’s for this wonderful plane ride to some far away country and adventure.” I was then redirected to another line: the PE line. The PE line wrapped around half the cafeteria. The PE line moved at a speed of one one hundreth of a mile per hour. The PE line had only two administrators that worked on scheduling students.

I joked around with my fellow linemates—they should put up advertising for arena scheduling. “Arena Scheduling–Come on, everyone’s doing it!” or maybe “Arena Scheduling—Don’t miss what hundreds of kids wait in hour long lines to go to!” We bet on when we would get to the front, but I was twenty minutes too optimistic. When I got to the front of the line, the PE Department Head was busy convincing people to take world games. I had watched her before, and she kept trying to sell kids the gym with the lowest amount of people in it, I was amused. She got to me—”How about PGA?” PGA? What? “Oh it stands for Personal and Group Awareness, you’ll love it. It’s like...you’re on an island and you have to get off, or other games.” So I signed up. I figured it was better than world games.

In total, I spent 95 minutes in lines and 5 minutes scheduling. I was about average. So if most people have only a 5 minute scheduling debt, then I can’t imagine there isn’t a better way to run this.

I realize I’m not the first nor probably the last to write about today, but I hope you’ll forgive us, (or at least enjoy laughing at our pain) I know the only way I could make it through the thing was to think about all the good blog stories.


Sachi