It’s that time of the quarter again: registration. Unless you’re a diehard morning person — shame on you — registering means dragging yourself out of bed at an obscenely early time of day to woozily punch in a bunch of SLNs that you prepared the night before, and then pray that you will be rewarded with a green check mark. There’s a Facebook group devoted to said check mark, believe it or not.

There are a few things that can make your life somewhat easier this quarter and next.

As with most undertakings, assembling a decent schedule is five parts preparation, three parts execution and two parts dumb luck. Make a primary schedule and a few backups, and have them all ready to copy-paste in. Set two alarms, one out of reach of your bed. Line up older friends to hold classes for you.

Unfortunately, you can get all the technical bits right, but if you signed up for something you find boring, you’ll still be bored come autumn. Sometimes, you don’t have a choice in what you register for or when you do it. These non-choices are, of course, ultimately dictated by your major, which is hopefully something you wanted to begin with. For everything else, you’d better make some decisions quickly.

Filling out your electives can be boring if you just randomly sign up for something that fits the requirements. Here’s one way to avoid elective hell: Find good professors.

The composition of the group that makes up the UW community is always in flux. About a quarter of the undergraduate-student population turns over every year as seniors graduate and freshmen and transfers join. Law and MBA students may come and go even more quickly, while graduates pursuing doctorates may linger a little while longer.

The embedded core of the university, of course, are the professors. There are plenty of professors at the UW that have been here longer than we have been alive. The best professors will make their classes worth taking, whether easy or difficult.

If you dig through the time schedule and course evaluation catalog enough, you might be able to find something really worth taking. The UW, like all teaching institutions, has a proportionally small elite of brilliant instructors that shine in their fields. Many of them teach 100- and 200-level introductory classes and try to get to know their students even in huge lectures. Find them, and take their courses if you can. They can make fulfilling graduation requirements painless.

Finally, be aware that you may be able to ask a professor to give you a writing assignment that will turn a non-writing class into a writing credit. It could save you a lot of trouble.

By the time you read this, I’ll have registered already — unless I accidentally leave my alarm clock set to the usual position of noon sharp instead of 5:45 a.m. Most of you, however, are still going to be playing with the registration tools.

Reach columnist Russ Wung at opinion@dailyuw.com.