The day is here. I’ve been preparing for weeks. My palms are sweaty as I fumble at the corners of the torn-up paper with all the five-digit numbers I’ve been jotting down. I stare down the clock as it moves slower than ever. Each click of the second hand echoes in my head; it is almost time.

And then it’s here. 1 p.m. comes and I type in six different PINs as quickly as I can. I press enter and…that’s it. Registration is over. I take a deep breath and look over my schedule, the schedule I pained over making the last few weeks. There were no holds on my account, no unfilled prerequisites, no trouble at all.

After all the preparing I did for weeks, my second-to-last registration ever came and went without any incident. It was without a doubt the most anti-climactic registration of my college career.

I am a self-proclaimed registration nerd. I spend hours each semester setting up a schedule for every possible scenario, I beg my friends to let me make their schedules and I probably know your major requirements better than you do yourself.

One of the things I look forward to most each semester is registration day, when I can finalize my schedule for the next semester. I have been that way ever since the summer before freshman year. When I first realized I would get to pick my own classes in college, I scoured the course catalog trying to figure out what I wanted to do.

I didn’t realize at first how hard registration was going to be, but that was when I became obsessed. I was at one of the later orientations of the summer before freshman year. By the time it was my turn to register, almost every class was full, including all the ones that would fulfill any requirement I needed. That first semester I was left taking two classes that were not fulfilling any Gen Ed or major requirements. That was a pretty frustrating feeling, so from that point on, I made it my mission to conquer every future registration of my college career.

The next few registrations were stressful, yet exhilarating, experiences. I ran into problems and I had to run around getting override codes, but eventually I got into the classes I needed. I set out to conquer registration and I did. I set myself up with a killer schedule every semester and I was able to do that just by being prepared.

The day that class schedules are released for the following semester is basically Christmas for me. I love finally getting to look at the times and professors for each class and begin the planning stages for the next registration.

I’ve found, sadly, as each registration comes and goes, it gets increasingly less exciting. Naturally, my registration obsession led me to accumulate a lot of credits. I always get a much better registration time than everyone else in my class. This is great of course, but it has also made the registration game less exciting. One of my favorite things in life is being able to win at games and they are not fun if they are not a challenge.

This year I registered on the second day and I am a junior. All of my classes were totally wide open, and they probably still will be for a few days. As much as it has always been my goal to register perfectly, I am disappointed to find that the “perfect” registration day is boring for a registration addict like me.

I find it even more disappointing that I have only one registration day left in college. It will once again be a boring one, which will provide no game to beat, but I will be sad to register for the last time. One year from now, when I am preparing for graduation, I only hope I will have the opportunity to make some poor undergrad’s class schedule, just to get a taste of that excitement one last time.