Do the shuffle, the NU shuffle.

Notorious for its runaround, it’s difficult to narrow the pickings down to just one department at Northeastern to win the “Best Example of the NU Shuffle” for 2004. This year, reigning supreme, the Department of Cooperative Education, co-op for the simpletons, takes the cake and the votes for this prestigious honor.

While some areas of the university may have fully functional and actually existing co-op advisors, other departments find that the room designated for such a position is laden with decade-old cobwebs and notes indicating sparse office hours.

OK, so it may not be THAT extreme, but for some people looking to arrange a meeting, whether through office hours or myneuCOOL, there is one consistent state of mind for the student population — frustration.

Tracking down advisors in general is an arduous task, whether through the Financial Aid Department, realm of academia or through the co-op clan. A maze of offices, canceled appointments, shut down servers, delayed interviews and now with semester conversion thrown into the mix, this process has become a bit more off-skew. Placing our future, for the most part, in the hands of an advisor dealing with, in some cases, hundreds of other needy students in the same predicament as ourselves, is a bone-chilling and horrifying necessity. All the students ask for are direct answers, advisors in the flesh rather than an answering machine, and an end to the heart palpitations as students chase their careers around campus, hoping for some opportunity to pan through.

Above all else, this isn’t happening in a state school or at Boston University. It’s happening at a school where we are “ranked” No. 1 for our co-op program, and I’d be surprised if more students didn’t develop heart conditions before age 22 just from heightened stress and aggravation.

And people wonder why kids are sick of the shuffle.