How to Get Good Grades

Step 7 Transfer Techniques

There are several techniques you can use to get into the class you need at the time you need.

1) Wrestle the Red Tape. Say you want to get into a particular class, ("I want to get into a particular class") but it's already full. Every school has a procedure to allow overflow students (this means you) into the class. At my school, students must ask the professor (preferably in person, works best with a Hippie) and then fill out a form. The first time I visited the registrar's office, I grabbed twelve copies of every form I could get my hands on, just in case. This is the easiest method to get into a class you couldn't register for normally.

2) Show Up Uninvited. Signed up for a class during a time that's not convenient for you? Show up to the class that would be convenient on the first day. Before the professor arrives, make a public anouncement to the effect of, "Excuse me, I'm signed up for this class at a different time, but I work full time (or whatever your situation is) and I really need to attend this time period. Will someone please switch with me?" Then wait silently. Usually someone will offer to switch. If not, mention that you'll pay someone $10 to switch classes. If no one answers, raise the stakes. You can go as high as $50, but I wouldn't go any higher. Actually, I've never had to give money to anyone. Simply offering the money shows you're really serious, and prompts someone to offer to switch.

3) Beat the Bureaucrat with Kindness. The third method to take a class you're not normally allowed to take (like World History II before World History I) involves getting the bureaucracy to make an exception for you. Ask any school authority that you're friends with to go to bat for you. Ask them to contact the authority that could make it happen. I've asked my academic advisor, my scholarship advisor, the ombudsman, and my Visual Effects major advisor for such help.

In my case, my school required me to take a life drawing class, drawing naked people that I am not married to. That is completely incompatible with my religious beliefs, so I went to the administration and persisted, and instead took a much harder class, "Drawing for Sequential Art". As long as you do everything very politely and continue persisting, this method will almost always work. Unless the red tape is just too strong to cut through . . .

4) Change Your Major. Sometimes there's some system policy that's so rooted and so tied up in red tape you can't get around it no matter who you've talked to or how many people you've asked for help. In such a case, it's time to call in the bigwigs. I'm speaking of your department chair. She can do some major miracles, but is most likely a very busy person, so you only want to go to her after you've exhausted all other options. When you visit, mention that you've already talked to everyone else, concisely state your problem, and offer at least three possible solutions to the problem. This prompts your chair to start thinking about possible solutions . . . and usually gets the problem solved, though not immediately. If even this fails, you might try to get a meeting with the college board or college president and repeat the same information to them.

At SCAD (the college I attended) I was constantly having problems registering for the classes I needed at the times I needed. I worked full-time, had a wife and kids, and was a full-time student. Scheduling classes was a major challenge. My problem was finally solved when the department reorganized the course work for my major and eliminated many prerequisites, drastically decreasing demand on the classes I needed to get into. If I had contacted the department chair with three possible solutions to my problem, I'm sure she could have solved it with an exception in this manner. I didn't think of contacting her about my situation, but you can learn from my hard knocks.