As a freshman, I found myself lucky when it came to the life-altering process that is choosing classes on CAESAR. During the days when everyone in my dorm was carefully charting possible schedules and mapping out yearlong academic choices, I did the same – except I always managed to get a kick-ass registration time.

But it all got me thinking. What happens when your CAESAR registration appointment just sucks? Like, legitimately sucks? Like, late-night, after-dinner, everyone-is-going-out-to-party-while-you’re-still-filling-your-shopping-cart sucks?

Allow me to pose a hypothetical. If, by chance, you have the unfortunate luck of getting these horrible registration times over and over again, contrary to university promises of equality, then, I hypothesize, CAESAR could, theoretically, ruin your entire college career… and your entire life.

Bear with me here. Let’s say that you need to take a certain class that acts as a prerequisite to all other classes in your field of study – Medill’s famed Chicago storefront journalism class, for instance. Now, if you’re one of the lucky Medill kids to get into this class in the fall, then congratulations! You can begin your rise to the wonderful world of journalism electives. There’s magazine, broadcast, newspaper – so many worlds to choose from! And, as a bonus, you can use that experience to boost your internship applications for the upcoming summer.

Unless you don’t get into the class in the fall. Or the winter. In which case, you can’t take it until the spring, and by then you’ve got no journalism elective to put on your resumé, no cool class experience to add to your transcript and no incredible portfolio clip from that heart-wrenching emotional masterpiece you wrote about that tough-as-nails single mom who made it on her own in the big city.

Face it. You’re screwed. Your internships have all been given to other kids with superior fall and winter transcripts, kids who took all the classes you wanted to take but couldn’t get into. And it’s not just Medill. You might be applying for an internship at NBC in the winter, but can’t take that television production class until spring! Or that prestigious summer job at Pixar that requires an animate arts class that you were one registration time shy of getting into?

Then, after the internship-less summer, you suddenly have to catch up to the dozens of people who share your major who are now worlds ahead of you, people whose skills and craft have been honed by taking those classes you missed out on. Their fruitful summers were filled with joy and laughter and high-profile internship ass-kissing. Ass-kissing that could have been done by you! Ass-kissing that could have led to future jobs, future networking, future careers!

I’m not saying anything is wrong with CAESAR, nor am I saying that the random distribution of appointment times is unfair. But if the gods are against you and you’re just naturally unlucky, then your entire college career can come crashing down in front of you. Again, it’s just a hypothetical, but still… et tu, Brute?

Medill sophomore Marc Snetiker can be reached at [email protected].