Whoops, I Did It Again

I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my first year at university. I’ve walked into the wrong lecture hall, walked into the wrong exam room, almost forgot to go to an exam all together. This one however, might take the cake. In the hustle and bustle of the last month of school, between studying for exams, moving out of residence, and squeezing in last moments with friends, I let a couple things slip my mind. One of those things, I’m embarrassed to admit, was choosing my subject POSt.

When I first realized this, around May 18th (3 days after the deadline), I’ll admit I was a little bit panicked. Questions starting buzzing around in my mind about what was going to happen to my major, if I was going to be able to take the classes I wanted, and my imagination stretched so far as to worry if I might not even graduate! (my mom talked me down from that one pretty quickly) I immediately pulled up Google and found some pages that helped answer a few of my questions, but overall still left me with an uneasy feeling about what the consequence of my actions (or lack of action) meant. Luckily, I have this cool little gig where I write to a bunch of you, my fellow students, every week. So I decided to take this mistake, learn from it, and hopefully help others do the same. Here it goes; What to do if you forgot to enrol in a subject POSt… *Please note that the specific information below is only relevant to Arts and Science students who have identified their subject POSts to be Type 1 & Type 2. Please contact your registrars' office to find out the right steps and information for you. Step 1: Don’t panic! There is another time period to choose your subject POSt coming up shortly, July 3rd to August 29th to be exact. Step 2: Go to this webpage and find out what kind of POSt request you want to make. Some requests, Type 1, have no enrolment requirements, so you can enrol in them at any time and be automatically accepted. This happened for my minors in History and Philosophy (yay!) so I was able to enrol in them on ROSI immediately. Step 3: Once you have seen what request types your subject POSts are, enrol in the ones that you can using the Subject POSt codes and ROSI. For any subject POSts that you can’t enrol in yet, write the code down somewhere safe and sit tight until July 3rd. Step 4: Call your college registrar or the program sponsor of the program to which you’re applying if you have any other questions or concerns.

Luckily for me, the University College Registrars office helped to calm me down from my premature panic attack, and answered a couple important questions that I was having.  Q1: Is it possible for my program to fill up during the first subject POSt selection? A: “It’s possible, but not likely.” Spots are kept open in the 2nd enrolment time slot for students who are taking summer credits in order to gain entry into their desired POSt. Unless there is a very large, very strong group of students in the first round and a very limited number of spots - you should be safe! Q2: Since I will not be "accepted" into my program until the fall, will I not get first choice (as I would if I had applied in the spring and been accepted already) to courses in my department/program?  A: Unfortunately the answer to this is yes. Since you have not officially been accepted into your program, you will not have first access to the required courses. This does not mean you won’t get into them, it just means you won’t be the first. If by any chance you don’t get into your subject POSt in September, there is still time between the date you find out if you’ve been accepted, and the final drop date for courses. You’ll have from July 12th to July 21st to re-work your schedule. Q3: Since I forgot to choose my subject POSt, will I now not get into any of my classes, have to take 4th year calculus ultimately leading me to failing all my courses and flunking out of school therefore having to live on my parents couch until I’m 50 when I can move in to my own place with my 12 cats, living a life of regret and despair? 

The registrar couldn’t answer that one for me…  Overall, while it’s unfortunate to forget to enrol in your subject POSt it’s not the end of the world. This is why there are registrars, program sponsors, and backup dates. These resources are put here for the students, and they’re only fulfilling their purpose when we utilize them. So mark July 3rd in your calendar, take a deep breath, and relax. For most of us, this subject POSt will probably change a couple times before we graduate anyway. Now that my miniature crisis is over I can focus on more important things, like continuing to bring you new content here on the Life @ U of T blog every Monday and connecting with you all on Twitter. So until next week, have you ever missed a deadline or forgotten an assignment? Let me know down below.