December 31, 2009

On University Registrations

Ah registration. Ever since my first semester, it's always been a stressful event. Despite there being an online system, students always have to try to register as soon as possible before the sections close and they either end up with a terrible schedule or have to go beg someone to let one more person into their section.

Registration this time was exceptionally stressful, however. Not only did they make it on a Friday, when no one has the option of going to the university if something doesn't work out, but they also made it on Christmas day. Now it would've been fine if all we had to do was simply log in when it starts and register, but after 5 semesters of experience with our registration department, we know very well that they never start on time, so all we do is keep refreshing the page until it opens. So assuming this year wouldn't be any different, I, along with half the student body spent 6-8 hours refreshing the same page. And when it did finally start at 2 PM, turns out they changed the entire system so we couldn't register for half our courses.

It was an unbelievable waste of time, and I decided to send an email about it to both the registration department and the university's president. The registration department didn't even budge, but much to my surprise, the president actually replied a day later telling me to come see him. He told me that my comments were taken into consideration and even apologized for setting registration on Christmas day and I must say I was very impressed. We tend to complain a lot, but I felt like this time complaining actually helped in doing some good.

And this is why I urge everyone who has a problem to complain, to the right person at least. Maybe nothing will happen, but then again you might actually get your opinion heard and help solve whatever problem you and a whole lot of other people are facing.

3 comments:

Saed said...

Yay for democracy!!

HIP HIP!!

HOORAYY!!!

kinzi said...

Yay girl! You are learning the power of positive complaining. Tell ya, it is one of my favorite things to do now.

My Christian feathers are a little ruffled at this. Do the admin not know that Dec. 25 is the 2nd most important holiday of our faith? Um, this would NEVER fly in Germany, so where were the German administrators?

Would they set registration on the first day of Eid? Someone was not thinking.

Farah said...

Kinzi, I have no idea, I mean our VP is German. Maybe they thought that the majority of students wouldn't mind, and seeing as the German staff wouldn't have to do anything themselves, they shouldn't bud in.