Willing withdrawal

Today, it’s sink or swim.

It’s the last day to auto-W that class that you thought sounded really cool on the syllabus but in reality is threatening your $2 Tuesday livelihood because of its Wednesday morning meeting time.

Or it may be your last chance to give up on Finite. Again. (There’s always next semester.)

Some professors argue for the auto-W date to be moved forward in the semester. They point out that students would probably be more committed to classes. Imagine not having the plan B to drop a difficult course. Sure, you’d be a lot more paranoid, but you’d also slack off a lot less.

The opportunity to pick up second-eight-weeks courses only exacerbates the “commitment issue.” Missing credits can simply be made up in the last half of the semester.

Moreover, a late auto-W date may affect students’ ability to enlist in courses they are really interested in or need to take.

Many challenging classes may reach their enrollment cap during the first week only to have half the seats empty at the final because of student withdrawals. Not only is this inefficient, it is also inconvenient and frustrating for the people who cannot get into their desired courses.

Few students, however, would really support moving the auto-W date earlier. Not only would that make our lives more difficult, the negative effects it could potentially have on our transcripts and GPAs would adversely affect our graduate school applications and resumes.

There does, however, exist a compromise to the two stances, a way for students to sample courses they may have interest in without being penalized by a poor grade while keeping them committed to their classes.

Moving the drop date later than the first week of school would allow students to get a better feel for their classes while keeping enrollment open later. One week is simply not enough time to gauge the difficulty level of a particular class or likability of a certain professor.

Under the current schedule, the only impression students get of classes meeting once per week prior to the drop date is a day of syllabus reviews and introductions. And that’s better than classes that don’t meet at all in the first week of school, such as Monday classes last year.

An extended drop period would give students the freedom to sample different courses and professors before making a semester-long commitment. Moreover, it would allow students on wait lists more of an opportunity to take the classes they want or need.
Not to mention it would help keep those pesky W’s off our transcripts.