I have been at Millikin for three years, and as I am wrapping up my senior year and getting set up for my last semester, I have not seen anything as cut-throat as registration day. Well, except maybe the annual cookie party.

Twice every academic school year students pull themselves out of bed by 6:55 a.m. to get registered for their next semester’s load of courses. This is something we Millikin students have been training for. We take those texting fingers our parents scold us for, and we put those bad boys to use typing the CRNs for all the classes we want to take.

We prep, we sit there with our laptops and paper with our CRNs. That is, if you haven’t already lost your advising day worksheet. And we wait. The minutes start to move more slowly than they ever have in our entire lives, and all you want to do is register and go back to bed. That last moment is utter agony, I’m pretty sure it stays 6:59 extra-long on registration days.

The time finally switches, you hit refresh, ResNet takes an ungodly long time as you are stuck staring at the loading wheel and thinking, “everything I ever wanted to do with my life next semester is going to be gone.” You hit refresh again and again. Still nothing. That’s because MyMillikin and MUonline have officially bit the dust. Students all over have been anxiously awaiting the moment, and then, all at once you launch a full-scale attack on the server, and you kill it. It’s dead. You’re mad. And you still haven’t registered for your classes.

You cannot click the refresh button fast enough. Your clicks become more and more desperate, and you cling wildly to hopes that it will come back to you. You scream out and your roommate gives you that same look of pity, disgust, agony and rage, unless they were one of lucky few to slip through in which case you just stare at them as they gleefully and speedily type away CRNs.

Some time has passed now and you are finally into the website, you’ve got your CRNs and your typing fingers at the ready. Quickly, you enter the CRNs of the classes you are worried the most about getting into and you submit. Then you back track and enter in all of the other ones. But this moment in time at, 6:59 a.m., was as if you were in a “Hunger Games” arena or an Old-West gun draw. Unless, of course, you are lucky enough and your major happens to be one of the loving ones that pre-registers you for classes.

Nevertheless, you have still probably experienced the mad rush to get signed into the IN 350 that didn’t sound the hardest or the most boring and you’ve felt the glorious triumph rush through your veins as you collapse back onto your bed and sleep until class. But with that triumph, you have also tasted defeat. You’ve known the feeling of not getting into one or multiple classes, the hassle and begging that comes with getting signed into classes and the frustration of the server biting the bullet on one of Millikin’s most cut-throat days. We’ve all been there.