I met for the final time as an advisee with Professor Laycock yesterday, emerging successfully with my registration PIN and a decent schedule. The mandatory meeting that we must have with our advisors before registration is a useful one, and prevents the usual bout of cursing that populated registration my freshman and sophomore years (though I am unsure anything could have prevented that 7:30 a.m. 90-minute seminar).

Still, it is odd that we are forced to consult with our professors about our class registrations in junior and senior year. The issue is not so much the forced helpfulness as much as the officious oversight which should stop sometime in the midst of college. If it were not necessary, I would still visit my advisor — but it would be less forced than going for the all-too-necessary PIN .

As a gormless freshman myself at the University of Richmond, I registered for classes without an ounce of advice weeks before the first semester; it subsequently led to one of the most foolish yet delightful class schedules I have had. I learned from my errors and had a better schedule the next year (with the exception of the 7:30).

I’m not sure if underclassmen should no longer be made to consult with an advisor, but certainly by junior year we should not only be trusted to make prudent and researched choices but expected to do so. Removing the carrot of the registration PIN would be telling of how able students are to make decisions, possibly bad ones, on their own — and would strengthen the relationship of students and faculty by not forcing it. Mandatory handholding is heavy-handed by the time we’re upperclassmen.