January 5, 1965
My first two quarters at Cal Poly, class registration was held in Mott Gym. Hopefuls would walk in with a penciled in wish list of classes and walk around from table to table picking up punch cards.
The arena was filled with hundreds of students and every half hour another group would be let in. It was a Darwinian exercise in trying to fill your schedule before all the cards were pulled from the classes you wanted.
As the day went on more and more students could be found sitting in the sawdust on the floor erasing holes in their paper grids trying to fill them with enough units.
No one missed it when the 1980’s ushered in the computer age with CAR, computer assisted registration.
Here in 1965 the fees were an amazing $25.50. With all the bells and whistles you could get out for less than 30 bucks, provided you could pull your cards without losing your sanity. If you want health insurance that’ll be an extra 6 bucks, pay at the door.
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Back in time… I remember these days. It was an advantage to be a Biology major as teacher David Montgomery was pretty much the director of registration day. If you were lucky enough to work all day in registration, you got your classes pulled ahead of time and you didn’t have to find that most of the classes you wanted were already taken. Now they use computers, but things really haven’t changed, one still can’t get the classes they want.
Ah ha moment, the biology majors are the reason I always had trouble getting that English class to fill out my schedule. Yes, members of the jury, it is true. I am biologically unable to write, spell or punctuate.
Thanks for the comment Bob.
What a nice surprise to see this photo in the Spring 2009 CalPoly Magazine. As I looked at those registration fees I thought “that looks like what we were paying back then.” And then I looked down to see one of our prettiest classmates, Jean Stueve, as the cashier. I worked with her several times during registration, and I am certain those are my hands just beyond Jean stacking the registration cards. Such great memories of our youth and Cal Poly.
Thanks for the comment Norm and welcome to readers of CalPoly Magazine. I try to throw in a new (old?) Cal Poly entry in a couple of times a month and you will be familiar with many of the other area posts. Please feel free to comment, readers often improve the posts with their contributions.