Sooner or later, all students are faced with a class that gets cancelled or rescheduled so they can’t take it when they want to. What often happens in these scenarios is the student calls home frustrated telling you that one of his or her courses has been cancelled or rescheduled and it’s going to prevent them from graduating. This is usually said with a great deal of angst and tension and the first thing parents want to do is rescue them. To be specific, I’m talking about classes that are cancelled before the academic term begins, not classes that are cancelled because a professor is sick. And while having a class be cancelled or rescheduled is a royal pain, it is not the end of the world. So, how can you help your student respond to a cancelled or rescheduled class?
First, understand that ultimately, your student has to make the decision on what to do about a cancelled or rescheduled course. Second, this is no time to freak out — either for you or your student! Most students have some flexibility in when they take certain courses, so the cancellation or reschedule is most likely a small bump in the road toward their degrees. We often tell students when they are choosing their schedule for the upcoming term to pick two completely different schedules in case the classes they prefer to take aren’t open. This means they should already have considered other courses or class session (meeting times) when they make their class schedule. It should be easy, therefore, to just substitute a second choice class for the one that was cancelled or rescheduled. Most colleges have a procedure that must be followed if a student has to add a class once another one has been cancelled. So, encourage your student to seek out the registrar’s office on his or her campus. That’s one place on their campus that will always know the proper procedure.
Your student can also be a strong advocate for himself or herself. For example, if the cancelled course is one required for her major, your daughter can approach the department chair to ask their advice on what can be done. And she can certainly make the case to be allowed to add into another section of the class or get preference in a subsequent semester. She can also approach a faculty member in a course they want to take to replace the cancelled one and ask about being put on a waiting list or added to the class as an overload. Encourage her to make sure this is permitted by their college or university, though making contact with faculty members about their courses is almost always a good thing.
When you make these suggestions to your student, it’s perfectly okay for you to provide this advice while you’re on the internet searching the college’s website yourself. (I do that all the time and my daughter is amazed at how much I know about her university.) That’s how I knew the telephone number for her department chair before she could find it on her phone. This is one great way to grease the wheels for your student. You don’t have to do the work for them, but a nudge here and there or a point in the right direction is exactly what they need in situations like this.