Once again I have suffered through perhaps the most agitating three minutes of my life: scheduling. What should be an easy, non-stressful event ends up turning into a weeklong fiasco.

Right when you think you have all of your classes perfectly lined up, one of them fills up. Chances are the one that filled up is probably the major class that, out of all of the other classes on your schedule, you needed the most. This is especially true if you are a political science major (or minor).

I am a journalism major who is making an attempt to minor in political science. I say "attempt" because I am about to enter my junior year of college having yet to be able to get into a 400-level political science course, and I know several of my friends having the same problem.

You may be thinking "Why not just take a different course or just wait?" In my opinion, you come to college to learn something you are truly interested in and you want to spend the rest of your life doing. Having said that, I refuse to take a class just because it happens to have a few seats available.

It is true that we could all just wait for our courses to open up, except they don't offer every course every semester. Out of more than 50 400-level classes in the political science department, approximately 20 are currently scheduled for the fall 2007 semester.

On top of that, playing the waiting game could inevitably push you into an additional semester. With the cost of attending college today, who can honestly afford to stay any longer than needed?

There are many reasons why those wishing to major or minor in political science are having such difficulties. The number one reason is the lack of classes offered.

If they are going to offer a minimal amount of classes, perhaps the department, whichever department it may be, should schedule additional sections.

Looking again at the fall 2007 political science schedule, there are no 400-level classes with more than one section. Not only that, but most of these 400-level classes have a maximum of 35 seats, with a few exceptions.

I suppose a lot of this probably arises out of financial constraints faced by the university. Sometimes, however, I have trouble accepting that response as our tuition costs continue to rise while the university embarks on frivolous projects around campus. One project in particular is the "greenification" project of the campus. Although I am sure this would make Penn State look amazing and give us some respect in the environmental community in the long-run, none of us will be students here in the "long-run."

I suppose this can be seen as an attempt to attract more students, which is part of the problem of scheduling.

Penn State continues to accept a record number of freshmen each year without adjusting for the increase. This should be unacceptable to those of us who are already students and are struggling to schedule our classes.

I don't want to take anything away from the freshmen who are part of the increase, as this has nothing to do with them. This has everything to do with the administration at Penn State failing to adjust for constant increases in students.

There is an argument that freshmen are not the ones scheduling 400-level classes, which is understandable.

However, eventually they will be scheduling the upper-level classes, making this already difficult process even more tumultuous.

I'm also sick of slackers taking up seats in classrooms.

Being someone who generally attends all of my classes, I am appalled by the number of those who don't attend classes. These students take up the "seats" of those students who would actually attend the class.

Isn't the point of going to college to learn something?

We have so many phenomenal professors here at Penn State that it is truly a shame no one wants to attend their classes.

It angers me when exam day comes and the entire auditorium is full, while on a regular lecture day only about one-third of that same lecture hall is full.

Those of us having trouble scheduling our upper-level classes should not be happy at all. We should be angry at the administration for accepting more students than they can handle, not offering the proper number of classes or sections and spending money on frivolous projects without first considering the most obvious needs for those funds.

We should also be angry at our fellow students who happily take those seats and continuously refuse to sit in them until exam day.

We are forced to take classes we have no interest in so that we can graduate on time. To me, this is in clear contrast to the purpose of going to college.

Scheduling should not be this difficult, period.