The Add/Drop deadline for students at my school is two weeks into the semester. It was roughly the same at my previous institution. I’m not sure whether it is something about the students at my new institution or just the fact that I’m teaching Introduction to Sociology again for the first time in several years, but this year I received more requests to enroll in my class during this time period than I ever remember having before. About 2/3 of them came in the second week of the Add/Drop period, some at the end of the week, which meant that they wanted to enroll after missing two of 15 weeks, the first assignment, and over 100 pages of reading. I nicely explained this to them as my reason for denying their requests.
I know that some students cannot register when they are supposed to due to payment issues or academic probation, but it seems that at least some students must be treating the first two weeks of class as a trial period for their courses before determining if they will commit to a full semester. A few advisors also seem to be dropping the ball, suggesting that students change courses long after the spring advising sessions, though it is possible that students just didn’t show up for spring advising. The annoyance of all of this is probably increased by the fact that I never changed my schedule after the beginning of the semester during my own college days.
Of course, the most likely explanation is that the sheer awesomeness of sociology and, beyond that, my teaching of sociology spread like wildfire through the campus in the first week of classes, causing the huge number of requests to join my course.
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