Registration.... a day of que-ing and frustration.
Welcome to Britain, where lines are called 'ques' and where the concept of a 'Liberal Arts Institution' is as foreign as.... well, no one over here gets it.
Today was spent attempting to register for classes at the Univeristy of Nottingham. While computers may or may not have been invented in 1934 (ENIAC, Iowa State, bitches), they still prefer to have students wait in line with a sheet of paper that outlines their plan of classes to take (for the entire year, mind you), without any kind of idea as to how the classes may fit into a weekly schedule.
So picture this: 9 Luther students, confused as hell, get on the bus to head to campus knowing that they must sign up for spring and fall semester-- only some classes will transfer to Luther, and we can only take 'Level One' or 'Level A' classes... Also, as mentioned previously, we have no idea what times these classes will meet, or if we will even get in the classes in the first place.
In England, each student selects a course of study at age 14. At this point, they begin to specialize. By age 16, 40% of students in England have dropped out, while the other 60% are to chose just 4 subjects. By 17, they take only 3 subjects, making them very very sure about their subject area.
In a lecture today after dinner, a visiting professor told us a good way to think about it is "Americans know very little about a lot of things, while the British students know alot about very little"
So, while I wanted to sign up for 1)American Novel, 2)Islamic Traditions, 3)History/Context of English Language, 4)Television Cultures, I will be sent to 3 different meeting points on 2 separate days, with lines that (today at the Theology dept) were 2 hours long.
In the American Studies Dept, over 40 foreign students waited for 20 minutes before a lady came crashing into the corridor exclaiming "If American Studies is not your home school, you must leave! I have 9 students on this list, the rest... get out!"
Try explaining to someone who assumes you've taken American Studies classes for the last 5 years what a "Liberal Arts School" is and what it means as far as class variety. Absolutely clueless.
Rest of the story? After being kicked out, we headed to Internt'l students office, where an even more inept lady fed us some line about 'don't worry about it' after which we headed back to the same building and meandered our way into a room for returning students, and managed to register after another lenghty debate about American Schooling and the idea of learning more than one subject for 10 years....
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Tomorrow Brandon and I will attempt to sign up for a class that (fingers crossed) Luther will accept as our 'linguistics' course for the Secondary Ed minor.
In other news, I'm leaning towards the school magazine Impact, running Crosscountry, and possibly enjoying myself and allying with the Real Ale Society.
Good times.
School in exactly 6 days. Bout damned time.
kevin
posted by Kevin @ 10:50 PM
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