Precept procrastination problems

Fellow Princetonians, to the detriment of my work and to the frustration of my editor and anyone who’s ever given me a deadline, I procrastinate. I push things off to the last possible minute and only barely, if ever, make due dates. Time management, preparation, forethought — all foreign concepts to me. Clearly I am in need of an intervention and a planbook.

The funny thing, though, is that in certain ways, Princeton suffers from a similar problem. That’s why I feel comfortable offering a few suggestions regarding Princeton’s failed precept scheduling system, which literally waits for the last minute to place students in precepts.

Last April, I greeted registration e-mails from Robert Bromfield with a swift delete and a drop in my spam folder. But, this evasion — like all my other forays into adolescent defiance — was woefully short-lived, and, after a few conversations with my friends, my adviser and my affectionately overbearing parents, I resigned myself to registering for another semester of classes before the deadline had passed. And so, I woke up early one fine May morning and saw to my relief that my classes hadn’t filled and that I had been ensured a spot in each of them.

Relief saw the summer, bloomed, confronted the first days of a Princeton fall and quickly began to wither. When precepts were assigned, my perfectly organized schedule began to fall apart. While students in lab sciences simultaneously register for a lecture and a corresponding lab time, those of us in precept-based classes must register for a lecture and then wait a few months before choosing a precept through Blackboard. I understand that precepts are tenuous things and can be changed and canceled based on various external factors, e.g. the busy schedules of professors and graduate students, but I am completely at a loss for why our precept scheduling system on Blackboard begins as late as a week after classes have begun. Assigning precepts so late is tantamount to assembling a domino structure in the middle of a city street; conflicts are imminent, and, when they happen, schedules have a way of falling apart.

Some of the problems that arise from precept conflicts are relatively trivial. Purchasing new textbooks and returning old ones, for example, are hassles I can deal with. But for a student whose prospective major demands certain prerequisites, precept conflicts that arise after classes are well underway present a labyrinth of frustration and bureaucratic headaches. Precept conflicts can derail students’ academic plans and force them into classes that are already into their third lecture and second precept. With a week of material to make up, these students have begun their semesters in a position of stress and anxiety that is unnecessary and that really could have been avoided.

I’m not asking for April precept assignments. That would be greedy and might open up a can of worms with angry grad students and bewildered freshmen mixed in. Instead, let’s opt for precept assignment during freshman week, before classes have started and after freshmen have chosen classes. That way, students would know that conflicts exist before they have wasted their time and money on classes they have to drop. Precept conflicts will still occur, but that’s fine. Such conflicts are inherent in any registration process. But at least in the system I have proposed, those conflicts can be resolved at a more appropriate time: before classes have started. Without a precept assignment system that is sensitive to student schedules and potential conflicts, the integrity of the shopping period is entirely sacrificed in the name of irresponsible procrastination.

Princeton’s procrastination problem is an administrative failure and, short of laziness or attachment to the status quo, there is no rationale for Nassau Hall not to change its crippled system. I admit, as someone who chronically procrastinates, it might sound hypocritical to admonish Princeton for the same. But though I might be a hypocrite, at least when I procrastinate, I don’t undermine the academic experience of an entire campus.

Peter Zakin is a sophomore from New York. He can be reached at pzakin@princeton.edu.