FHN will be hosting its annual Registration Help Night on Jan 21 this year in the Learning Commons from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. to help students and their parents with registration issues and questions they have. The drop in event will function on a first come first serve basis, with guidance counselors available to walk students from incoming freshmen to students gearing up for their final year at FHN through the registration process. 

Since the registration process has gone electronic and students have only a short allotted time to meet with their counselors and discuss their schedule for the upcoming school year, the Registration Help Night will serve to allow students and parents more time to individually meet with counselors and get help with technology, advice for choosing suitable courses, and additional help signing up for programs that offer dual enrollment or A+ tutoring credit hours.

“We’re helping anybody that needs help,” College and Career counselor Brooke Prestidge said. “Whether it’s getting them on a computer to do the process, or looking at what they picked, or giving them advice, all of that is going on.”

Prestidge hopes that the event will take away some of the anxiety that parents and students have about registration by helping to walk them through the process and discuss their course options and choices, and help the students to feel more confident that they have a beneficial plan in place and are on the right track to reach their requirements and goals.

“ I think that’s the big thing, that students leave feeling like they’ve got a good plan in place and they know they’re taking the correct courses that they need, and the courses that they’re interested in,” Prestidge said. “It’s more just putting them at ease in the process, and the parents too. We get a lot of parents that come up to that night needing that assistance and reassurance.”

As a current junior, Alli Vernon is no stranger to the registration process, or the difficulties it can pose. Although she is confident about the courses she has taken and plans to register for, she has faced trouble in the past with registering for online courses, but believes those could be overcome by working with her counselor more thoroughly. 

“I had such a struggle with signing up for online classes for over the summer,” Vernon said. “Every time I try to do it, there’s some kind of miscommunication with my counselor, and I miss a deadline or something and I end up not getting to do it. With things like the online courses, getting to sit down and talk through it can avoid confusion on both parts.”

With FHN’s large student body, it can be difficult to obtain adequate time with one’s counselor to receive advice on the courses that they should take, and Vernon feels that students would be greatly benefited if they had more time with their counselor, which is the goal of the help night.

“I think it’s important that you get to sit and plan out your schedule for the next year and they can give you tips on maybe ‘If you’re going into this field, you might want to take this and not this’ or ‘This class is easier if you’ve taken this class already’,” Vernon said.“I think it will just be helpful for them to get a better understanding of what they want to take, and maybe what they’re taking- is it really the best choice? Then they’ll know it and be able to fix it before it’s June and then they’re like ‘Oh wait, this isn’t what I wanted to take’.”

For the first few weeks of the school year, crowds of students are attempting to shuffle their classes around and drop some to have room for others, which can often be a chaotic process that may be largely avoided if students choose to take advantage of the free Registration Help Night. .

“Every time after everyone gets their schedules, there’s so many kids who are flooding the counselors’ office because they’re trying to change everything on their schedule because they click the wrong thing, or they or they picked something they’ve changed their mind on,” Vernon said. “I think that having the counselors there for registration will prevent that a little bit more. Obviously it’ll still probably happen, but I think it’ll be a better situation then what it usually is.”