Scheduling

Even before returning to a world governed by integrals and rate laws, even before my foot had touched the first stretch of sidewalk covered in chalk, Cornell called. Or rather, emailed. A lot. In the week before my arrival on campus, I received approximately 500 Cornell-related emails, plus or minus 480, confidence of around 3%.

Besides classes, I have four other groups to schedule: AAIV, Cornell Productions, Life of the Hill blogging, and pep band. Three out of the four have irregular hours . . . and days. To make things even more fun, I have to schedule things around a Saturday PE class. I can’t wait until prelims start.

But wait; don’t despair. To alleviate all your scheduling woes, get Google calendar today. Use it to record the last time you went to the dentist, remind you to take your vitamins, and keep you from skipping missing a class ever again. Act now, and for the low, low price of $0.00, you can get your very own Google calendar today.

So yes, I currently use Google calendar to keep track of what I have scheduled when. (No, I don’t use it to record dentist visits or tell me to take my vitamins.) I even color code my different schedules (and categorize my emails, and use a ruler to underline my notes in class). Because in college, you don’t have entire afternoons free. You have 2:14-3:03 in the afternoon free, before which you've had classes and a lab, and after which you have a rehearsal, dinner, a club meeting, and then maybe after that you’ll stop by office hours, because, oh yeah, homework.

I won’t say all days are like that (they’re not), but when everyone has days like this once in awhile, if you’re in charge of scheduling, you might as well pick dates by throwing darts at a calendar. That should work about as well as the “please fill out this survey with all the dates/times you’re definitely free, probably free, likely free, might be free, could possibly skip something else to be free, buried under a pile of textbooks, and Gone Fishing.”

To deal with my personal schedule, I start with anything mandatory (classes). Then I add anything that I've committed to (work for Cornell Productions, certain AAIV or pep band events). Then I put on things that have a definite time and day but I’m not positive I’ll be attending. Anything without a date or time that isn't compulsory doesn't go on until I have more details. Unless it’s something that I really want to attend, in which case I will specifically keep my calendar free around possible times for the event. It’s my own personal version of first come, first served. And that is how I avoid “accidentally” skipping make sure I’m where I need to be at all times once in awhile.

The preceding has been a glimpse of my college life and how I remember to go to class. Hey, people strangely found the contents of my refrigerator interesting, so why not this?