In the fifteen years of working in higher education (with the vast majority of those years in the registrar's office), the authors have participated in all types of emergency planning--a registrar staple--including earthquakes, fires, severe weather, floods, bomb threats, and even H1N1 pandemics. But none of that planning truly prepared them for the experience of the first year of the COVID pandemic. However, there have been many lessons in resilience, about finding new ways of working, new ways of teaching, and new ways of learning that will inform and change practices into the future. It is wise to take these opportunities to embrace those changes that serve and make them part of the new canon. The opportunity can also be taken to identify those practices that were have held onto that no longer serve and let them go. After this year, very few people will remember clearly what it was like in the "before times." This article includes the story of one institution's response to scheduling, the forces that drove, the lessons learned, and how those systems use thinking to steer a response.