I want to be very careful about what I write about CUNYfirst. I don’t want to be the one sparking a lot of criticism and negativity about CUNYfirst but as far as I know there has been already a great deal of disappointing experiences with CUNYfirst considering that it has not yet even been a week since CUNYfirst has been launched. If you are currently a Queens College student and by now still have not heard about CUNYfirst, I believe you’re in trouble. You better check your Queens College email, visit Queens College’s website and make sure that you do claim your CUNYfirst as soon as possible. Get to know CUNYfirst, make sure you account is up and running. Be sure that you can log-in and you can navigate through the website without any difficulties, because soon you will have to register for Winter and/or Spring classes using CUNYfirst. eSims is gone…and it is now history.

People ask me why did school have to switch to CUNYfirst? They ask what was wrong with eSims in the first place? And all I can say is that I don’t and I truly don’t know. I don’t think that they are switching to CUNYfirst without a good reason. Switching to CUNYfirst costs substantial amount of money and time, therefore I do not think that CUNY would do such a huge transition without having a great reason to do. So I think there is a reason for this switch, but I don’t know the reason.

I claimed my account on Monday, November 15th. I wouldn’t lie, it wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be. I am good with computers, and I have enough background knowledge to make sure that I am doing the right thing but still I faced all sorts of different errors before I actually got to claim my account. I can log-in to my account but of course when I log in I don’t really see anything that helpful or interesting yet. I was told that I would see different options and links added eventually.

The truth of the matter is all CUNY schools will at point or other make this transition whether we like it or not, we don’t have any power over it. However us, here at Queens College and Queens Borough Community College were especially lucky because we were chosen to be the first 2 CUNY schools to test out CUNYfirst. If there are any advantages will be the first one to experience it, and if there are any disadvantages then we would also be the first ones to taste it. The issue here is not really CUNYfirst, because as it was mentioned earlier, CUNY has decided to bring everything for every CUNY school under one roof and it has called it CUNYfirst. The problem is where many students are just completely unaware of this transition. They don’t know what CUNYfirst is because (a) they don’t know their username and password for QC webmail (2) they don’t check their emails regularly (everyday day or so) (3) they simply are indifferent about deadlines and announcements made by the school (4) They don’t socialize and are not really connected with the students on campus to hear about the latest announcements and modifications.

Those who don’t know what CUNYfirst is. Those who still think they will use eSims to register for Spring 2011 classes will suffer greatly. They will be disappointed and in turn fall behind or experience a loss in some shape or form. Ultimately those people do not have anyone else to blame bu themselves because in all fairness school has done a great job in terms of keeping students informed and aware of this change. I have received numerous emails about the switch. School has provided many, many different tutorial and training sessions across the campus. They also added a special page on the website about CUNYfirst which includes detailed information about it. So they did a fairly good job informing students about the switch. It is ultimately the student’s responsibility to comply with school’s policy and make necessary adjustments. Believe it or not CUNYfirst is part of it.