Spanish classes, part two

Well, dear readers (both imaginary, and at least one real...about that in a day or two), I prepared to sign up for my Spanish class at M University earlier this week.

I remember registration from my long-ago undergraduate years as a process that involved thumbing back and forth through the telephone-book sized calendar, making draft after draft of timetables trying to balance my need for 12 hours sleep each night with the 8 a.m. start time of all of the courses I wanted, and generally dealing with a huge bureaucracy and lists of acronyms until I finally gave up and took courses leaving me with 3 hours between some classes and races across campus to reach others. I remember long lineups for student card photos, armfuls of papers, pamphlets from various clubs and committees, and horrendous trips through the maze of textbooks in the bookstore for overpriced texts.

Now, I've taken a couple of university courses at other institutions since retirement, and I know that 'plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose' when it comes to registration. The computer has replaced the reams of paper, but the websites are as awkward to navigate as the hallowed halls, and the acronyms have grown in length and obscurity of meaning. Student card photos are as horrific as ever, and textbook prices are obscene. But I thought I'd cut through many of the problems as I planned to take this course at my alma mater, where my student number is still on file, and where I don't have to show that I have academic credentials, as they granted them to me.

Wrong I was. It was true that I was an alumna, and the fact that I still remembered my student number was a plus. (6903729...a number which, having had to record it on every term paper, exam, and every form for four years is as familiar to me as my social insurance number). What didn't help is that students now have a bar code as well as a student number, and attaching one to my 35 year old student number seemed to be beyond the ken of the university computer system. Add to that the fact that one bureaucrat said that I would be considered a 'continuing ed' student, (which led to a two-day excursion through the continuing-ed department, both physically and online, and which turned out to be a wasted trip), while another labelled me a 'continuing' student (note the subtle distinction here), which led me on a totally different path to registration. Add again to the equation that my husband is employed by the university, which entitled me to a bursary for part of the tuition, but only if I took the course for credit, not if I audited it (costing the university twice as much), and only if I filled out a series of forms which had to be submitted before the date that my registration could be complete, and before I knew if I would be accepted into the course, and the result was a confused, bemused, frustrated and bewildered applicant who sat down in front of my home computer, armed with my student number, bar code, student I.D., password, master calendar, and timetable code, ready to register for my Introductory Spanish class, to find....


The %$#@ COURSE IS FULL!