Brandeis Workday has so many fun features (I promise). The platform holds all of your information about your grades, course registration and student work hours—this will not stop me from showing you how you can gamify the platform. There are hidden features that I feel obligated to share.

1. Fake declare a new major

You can see how many classes that you have already taken count towards this new major. You never know! If you go to “academics,” then “academic advising,” then under the academic advising panel select “evaluate academic requirements,” you can add any major or minor to your dashboard to see your progress, without officially declaring anything. While the steps to find this hidden feature are long, it is well worth your time. Sometimes, you may even discover that you are only a few classes away from a new minor. 

2. Doomscroll through your unofficial academic transcript

Maybe the letters will shift if you look at it again. A recommended activity for when you do not want to work on homework but also are unwilling to put your computer away and do something else with your time. So many metrics to look at! Also—a great way in which to see how many academic requirements you have left to complete. Celebrate in realizing you are so close to completing your major, and then despair at the knowledge that you will soon graduate and go out into the world. 

3. Go to “find courses Brandeis” and look at all of the cool classes you want to take but Brandeis may no longer offer

In no particular order, here are some of the interesting class titles I have found through the feature: 

AMST 106b – Food and Farming in America. Something I would love to learn more about.

ANTH 105a – Myth and Ritual. So mysterious. So intriguing. I wish I could bypass all of the prerequisites and just take this class. 

BIOL 152b – Virus Hunter Project Lab. Very action movie. 

BUS 293a – Real Estate Field Project. I am imagining that you get assigned a house at the beginning of the semester and need to close the deal by the final exam.

CHEM 141a – Classical and Statistical Thermodynamics. Implies the existence of non-classical thermodynamics. 

CLAS 156b – Living and Dying in Roman and Byzantine Egypt. So, this just covers everything in Roman and Byzantine Egypt? Bold claim. 

CLAS 190b – Ancient Mystery Cults. [redacted]

(perhaps good to pair with) COML 178a – Cult Books. [further redacted]

COSI 133a – Graph Mining. Showing up to class every day with my pickaxe to break down the graphs and ensure code stability. 

ECON/FIN 272a – Financial Crisis. Serious topic. Fascinating way to announce the name of the class. What about the financial crisis? 

ENG 108a – Literature and Heresy. Cool topic! I would have to wonder if this is about heresy within literature or how literature has fostered heresy in the real world. Maybe it is both?

FREN 153a – Food and Identity in the French and Francophone World. Without knowing anything else about the class, I would imagine that the professor will assign you a baguette for homework. 

(Full disclosure: I am not sure which of these are still consistently offered during an academic year … the names just sound cool.)

4. (If you are a student worker) submit your time perilously early in the week

So freeing. You no longer receive those “you have unsubmitted time” emails. And then you will have to work 5 more hours on Saturday and will have to resubmit. And then the cycle continues. 

5. Let us be real here: clear out your inbox notifications

It is like the game cookie clicker but more corporate! Instead of clicking to generate a cookie, you go to your inbox and individually (there is no way to do this in bulk) click that you have read every single notification you have received since freshman year. 

Overall, the Workday management system feels inefficient. The logical flow of the website does not make the most sense—it can sometimes take six to seven button clicks to get to the specific landing page you seek—and the flow is not intuitive. That being said, it can be incredibly fun to mess around with all of the various buttons and see where you end up. I cannot help but to encourage you to see if you can find any other fun features on the website.