Me being the sort of paranoid bloke that I tend to be, I have been eagerly scouring the registries of my various institutions looking for a backup course for summer, in the event that one falls through. Usually I look in the areas of the arts, humanities (archeology, psychology, anthropology, sociology, etc) and in Information Technology. This summer I thought it might be good for a laugh to designate one of my backup courses as an IT course… particularly as CSC234 – Advanced C++ Programming… which is a course that I have been wanting to take for many semesters, but have yet to have time to actually complete. Upon looking up the course prefix to locate available sections I discovered that in none of the traditional IT departments are courses being offered this summer, nothing in CSC (Computer Science/Programming), CIS (Information Systems), CTS (Technology), DBA (Databases) or Web (duh). Normally during the summer those programs are full of students, even two years ago when the programs were being redesigned and no one knew whether the course they took would exist at the end of the summer or not (Theory was that CAA or retroactive degree catalogs would protect them, and they did. Also new course codes were given a direct conversion matrix).
I found one department that offers an interesting course as a backup for the summer term, its SGD-113, Simulation and Game Development Program. Its a course that doesn’t do much for any requirements or anything, but it looks like a fun course. Unfortunately, I likely won’t take the course because I am in fairly popular courses for the summer and they are not likely to have any problems. Other alternates would be something like a literature course, but that would require me being quite desperate and ready to commit myself to reading during the summer, which I have heard can be quite enjoyable and is also quite portable. I have also placed a painting class as a backup, but the only problem with that is that it requires physical class meetings, which I frown upon during summer semesters, when I like to be flexible.
Note: backup courses are selected in the unlikely event that a primary scheduled course is canceled or needs to be dropped for some special reason.