Picking Professors

My method of picking classes has been to look up the classes that I need to take, find classes that fit my desired schedule, and then research the professors on www.profeval.com. I have used this method from the very beginning and have had fairly satisfactory results in finding good professors. If given the choice of taking my professors again or not, I would probably take all of them again except for two. I took a risk once and picked a TBA professor for speech. God blessed me with a great professor.

So, this evening found Jolene and Kris lounging on my bed. Bright and early tomorrow morning (6:15, if Kris has her way), Jolene will be headed up to Western Kentucky University to attend her Orientation, take her Math Placement Exam, and sign up for classes to start attending the University in the fall. She came over this evening to discuss these very imminent events.

Jolene was supposed to help Kris study for her Medical Terminology test while I looked up potential classes and professors for Jolene. I looked up various classes then opened another browser to start up Profeval. I clicked on the shortcut to the website and…nothing. I clicked it again. More nothing. I refreshed. Same result. I began to feel Great Despair.

Kris helpfully suggested that I restart my computer. Once before (mere days before signing up for classes) we had problems with the website not working. We moaned about it for days. I’m not sure if someone suggested that I reboot or if I just happened to and the website came back up immediately. So rather than wait days, I went ahead and rebooted. I started things back up and clicked on my Profeval link and…Nothing!

How could I possibly do effective research without Profeval? I started up browsers with www.RateMyProfessors.com and www.PickAProf.com to see if I could find any information there. Almost nothing. I messed around with potential classes, copying and pasting them into Excel to organize and manipulate them more effectively. Every few minutes, I would stab at the Profeval link to see if anything had changed since a few minutes before. Nothing changed.

I asked Kris to go reboot her computer to see if that would have any effect on my stabs. She said she would go do it but “You have to pray while I do it,” she said. I agreed. And I prayed. I begged and pleaded. I prayed out loud. I prayed silently. I prayed reverently. I prayed conversationally. While she was gone, I decided to try to meet God half way and reboot my computer again, hoping that the combined reboot would have a better result.

Two reboots later, I started up my browser and, again, stabbed at the link. Nothing. I tried all the tricks again with the same results. Despair. I woefully looked at Kris and Jolene lounging on my bed and reported to them that God had evidently said “No.” I abandoned that browser and went back to looking at classes.

Sometime later, I was clicking around and happened to click on the Profeval-not-responding browser. I stabbed at the link once more, just for old times sake. TADA!! It worked just as slick as you please. I managed to alarm Kris and Jolene with my jubilance. I guess God didn’t say “No”, he just said, “In a few minutes.”

I started researching professors and discovered that the process just doesn’t have the same appeal that it does when it’s your own schedule that you’re researching. The available classes are so limited by now because all the existing students have already enrolled. We just came to the conclusion we’ll leave it up to the advisors and if Jolene gets cruddy classes, then so be it. She’ll have more clout next semester. It’ll be interesting to see what they come up with.