Dear Registrar, please don’t make me fill out anymore useless paperwork.

First of all, you probably should understand what P.E. is at my college. A P.E. is worth 0.00 credits and is graded pass or fail. In order to graduate, you must take two different P.E. courses. Having already fulfilled this requirement my first year here, I simply wanted to take a P.E. course in order to stay fit. The only course that fit in my schedule happened to be one I had previously taken. Since I had already met the distributional requirement, you would think this wouldn’t be a problem. Well, guess again; it was a problem.

In order to take Strength Training (lifting weights with an instructor present), I needed to audit the course. Auditing a course simply means that you fill out a form that requires various meetings and signatures so that you can take the course for 0.00 credits and receive either a pass or a fail grade.

If you think this description sounds oddly familiar, you are of course correct. There is no difference between auditing a P.E. (0.00 credits, pass or fail) and simply taking a P.E. (0.00 credits, pass or fail) other than the paperwork associated with the former. Way to go Agnes Scott, have students fill out paperwork simply so they can take a P.E. under the exact same conditions as everyone else taking the course. By the way, the Registrar acknowledges the absurdity of this form, but apparently being completely useless and a waste of students’ time is not enough to get rid of this particular requirement. It must be some sort of tradition…or something…