College: *headdesk*
Sep. 14th, 2011 04:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethEvery year college hits new lows of disorganisation. Every. Year. And every year you wonder how it could get worse. And then there's the next year.
So, okay, in order:
The first thing was a good thing: The form PTG1 still exists, and I can still has. I don't know why it didn't turn up this year. Usually I get it in the post. The leaflet says I should have had email this time. I didn't. So I went in and picked up a copy. My money will be on its way as soon as I fill everything in and enrol.
... to enrol, I need a letter that says I will get the money. To apply for the money, I need to enrol.
The only way to cut that knot is to pay 25% up front.
Also, the grant will not cover the expenses this year, no way no how.
This is why I have been saving up for years, but it's still bloody cheap.
So, I took the form and went to the library.
... there are a few slight ongoing problems to do with the library, since this rebuilding and reorganisation.
Like, the books aren't actually out on the shelves yet.
*facepalm*
The Book Zone is very nearly almost looking like a completed room, but there are boxes and boxes of books, and everything between about 700 and Shakespeare is empty.
Guess where my books would be?
*sigh*
The Silent Study Area? I have to admit, they surprised me. It will be a lovely big room.
... note the 'will be'.
It is not in fact built yet.
The librarians have no idea when it will be built.
There's just a room full of builder supplies right now.
The Higher Education Zone does actually exist. The sign has fallen down, but the tables and chairs are there. So I have somewhere to sit.
But I do not have silence.
And this will drive me absolutely binky in very short order.
I went into the RUG room, the room for Aspie students, but it is not silent.
(I did see the guy I thought I recognised by category from last year's lessons.)
Also nobody ever showed me around or said 'hi, you can has!' so I sort of dither and leave again. :eyeroll:
My first lesson... well, on the plus side, I walked around the floor enough to find the ladies loos (opposite end of the building), and the right classroom. And I found where to plug in my computer. I have to rearrange the tables to do it, but that isn't new. The room doesn't have a computer chair, and my shoulders really really would like it if I could get one. I don't know who to ask. I'll probably email my tutor later.
... it's unlikely to help, but it's such a small accomodation, one can live in hope.
On the minus side: There were set books. The reading list went out before the holidays. Except not to me.
Everyone else had done the reading. But not me.
The first lesson plunged right in to the first text.
*facepalm*
I had a very embarrassing lesson.
I swear I asked my tutor how to get onto Blackboard and get reading lists, and she said I couldn't until I enrolled, and naively I assumed that meant we would get things like reading lists in the first lesson.
But noooooo.
We're third years. We should have spent the summer reading.
*sigh*
On the systemic fail minus side: Lessons now last 90 minutes.
90 minutes.
When we started they lasted 2.5 hours, with a break that made it 3 hours on the timetable. For a ten credit unit you got one 2.5 hour lesson.
Last year it was 2 hours.
This year it's 2 hours on the timetable, but the lecturer leaves after 90 minutes. Apparently the other 30 are for students to talk to each other. I know there's a fancy word for students talking to each other, but I have to say, I do not appreciate paying more money for the lecturer to leave after 90 minutes instead of 2.5 hours.
The other part time student agrees with me, this was not what we signed up for. This was not what we were offered, this was not what we enrolled for, this was not the course we were told we would get.
But what are the options?
grrr. arrgh.
More money, out of my pocket, for less teaching: Big Fail.
I saw the college principal today. I wanted to stick my tongue out at him, but I try to be proper mature and stuff. That was before I found the new rule.
So. Okay. I had a short yet embarrassing lesson.
What I did not have was getting enrolled.
We were told we would get enrolled in our first lesson. But no.
Tutor, who is doing her level best in the face of administrative insanity, had just spent an hour plus trying to enrol two other part time students.
We have no course code. The computer can't enrol us without a course code. The only person who can make a course code is not there today. It is half way through the first week and tutor tried to get enrolment done last week but nooooooo.
... Tutor was having interesting other problems too. Like discovering who she is teaching when they turn up. She is teaching people from a different course, now. Their module has the same name but they need completely different things from it. she didn't know they would be there. Nobody bothered to tell her.
Nobody bothered to send her the timetables either. The timetable confusion has been because she has been poking nice admin people on her own initiative to try and find these things out for us.
We're paying THOUSANDS OF POUNDS A YEAR for this.
... I personally am paying a smaller amount of thousands by way of a government grant and my own savings from government benefits, but I feel the objection holds anyway.
On a final plus side, I did find the teacher for Friday's lessons, and hence know what room we are in (F214) and what I should have read this summer (The Woman in White). Teacher also doesn't expect me to actually like the texts. She told other teacher I no like Victorian novels. And, well, yes, true, but I wasn't trying to show it. I said I mostly only like Doctor Who, which is true yet not massively likely to impress two Drs with specialities from before the 20th century. I am turning up for all these lessons though so I feel I'm broadening my horizons as well as possible. Given that mostly what I learn is more reasons I like Doctor Who best. So it goes.
... actually it was after that I discovered the empty library.
But the Woman in White is available in ebook form via the college library, if I can't download it or pick it up when shopping tomorrow. I have scheduled a shopping tomorrow because I knew there would be things.
... I can't believe I should already have read all the things.
*head in hands*
so it was kind of like one of those nightmares of back to school, only with more clothes.
I feel certain I'll pull myself together in time to do well for the rest of the course... well, as well as I ever do. It's just... that was a Day, that was.
*sigh*
And I haven't even investigated the food providing possibilities of this year at college.
But I did go to the supermarket on the way home and buy sandwich bags. That should cover it. Friday is two lessons with a lunch break, so I shall bring lunch.
and possibly even formally join the course.
*sigh*
So, okay, in order:
The first thing was a good thing: The form PTG1 still exists, and I can still has. I don't know why it didn't turn up this year. Usually I get it in the post. The leaflet says I should have had email this time. I didn't. So I went in and picked up a copy. My money will be on its way as soon as I fill everything in and enrol.
... to enrol, I need a letter that says I will get the money. To apply for the money, I need to enrol.
The only way to cut that knot is to pay 25% up front.
Also, the grant will not cover the expenses this year, no way no how.
This is why I have been saving up for years, but it's still bloody cheap.
So, I took the form and went to the library.
... there are a few slight ongoing problems to do with the library, since this rebuilding and reorganisation.
Like, the books aren't actually out on the shelves yet.
*facepalm*
The Book Zone is very nearly almost looking like a completed room, but there are boxes and boxes of books, and everything between about 700 and Shakespeare is empty.
Guess where my books would be?
*sigh*
The Silent Study Area? I have to admit, they surprised me. It will be a lovely big room.
... note the 'will be'.
It is not in fact built yet.
The librarians have no idea when it will be built.
There's just a room full of builder supplies right now.
The Higher Education Zone does actually exist. The sign has fallen down, but the tables and chairs are there. So I have somewhere to sit.
But I do not have silence.
And this will drive me absolutely binky in very short order.
I went into the RUG room, the room for Aspie students, but it is not silent.
(I did see the guy I thought I recognised by category from last year's lessons.)
Also nobody ever showed me around or said 'hi, you can has!' so I sort of dither and leave again. :eyeroll:
My first lesson... well, on the plus side, I walked around the floor enough to find the ladies loos (opposite end of the building), and the right classroom. And I found where to plug in my computer. I have to rearrange the tables to do it, but that isn't new. The room doesn't have a computer chair, and my shoulders really really would like it if I could get one. I don't know who to ask. I'll probably email my tutor later.
... it's unlikely to help, but it's such a small accomodation, one can live in hope.
On the minus side: There were set books. The reading list went out before the holidays. Except not to me.
Everyone else had done the reading. But not me.
The first lesson plunged right in to the first text.
*facepalm*
I had a very embarrassing lesson.
I swear I asked my tutor how to get onto Blackboard and get reading lists, and she said I couldn't until I enrolled, and naively I assumed that meant we would get things like reading lists in the first lesson.
But noooooo.
We're third years. We should have spent the summer reading.
*sigh*
On the systemic fail minus side: Lessons now last 90 minutes.
90 minutes.
When we started they lasted 2.5 hours, with a break that made it 3 hours on the timetable. For a ten credit unit you got one 2.5 hour lesson.
Last year it was 2 hours.
This year it's 2 hours on the timetable, but the lecturer leaves after 90 minutes. Apparently the other 30 are for students to talk to each other. I know there's a fancy word for students talking to each other, but I have to say, I do not appreciate paying more money for the lecturer to leave after 90 minutes instead of 2.5 hours.
The other part time student agrees with me, this was not what we signed up for. This was not what we were offered, this was not what we enrolled for, this was not the course we were told we would get.
But what are the options?
grrr. arrgh.
More money, out of my pocket, for less teaching: Big Fail.
I saw the college principal today. I wanted to stick my tongue out at him, but I try to be proper mature and stuff. That was before I found the new rule.
So. Okay. I had a short yet embarrassing lesson.
What I did not have was getting enrolled.
We were told we would get enrolled in our first lesson. But no.
Tutor, who is doing her level best in the face of administrative insanity, had just spent an hour plus trying to enrol two other part time students.
We have no course code. The computer can't enrol us without a course code. The only person who can make a course code is not there today. It is half way through the first week and tutor tried to get enrolment done last week but nooooooo.
... Tutor was having interesting other problems too. Like discovering who she is teaching when they turn up. She is teaching people from a different course, now. Their module has the same name but they need completely different things from it. she didn't know they would be there. Nobody bothered to tell her.
Nobody bothered to send her the timetables either. The timetable confusion has been because she has been poking nice admin people on her own initiative to try and find these things out for us.
We're paying THOUSANDS OF POUNDS A YEAR for this.
... I personally am paying a smaller amount of thousands by way of a government grant and my own savings from government benefits, but I feel the objection holds anyway.
On a final plus side, I did find the teacher for Friday's lessons, and hence know what room we are in (F214) and what I should have read this summer (The Woman in White). Teacher also doesn't expect me to actually like the texts. She told other teacher I no like Victorian novels. And, well, yes, true, but I wasn't trying to show it. I said I mostly only like Doctor Who, which is true yet not massively likely to impress two Drs with specialities from before the 20th century. I am turning up for all these lessons though so I feel I'm broadening my horizons as well as possible. Given that mostly what I learn is more reasons I like Doctor Who best. So it goes.
... actually it was after that I discovered the empty library.
But the Woman in White is available in ebook form via the college library, if I can't download it or pick it up when shopping tomorrow. I have scheduled a shopping tomorrow because I knew there would be things.
... I can't believe I should already have read all the things.
*head in hands*
so it was kind of like one of those nightmares of back to school, only with more clothes.
I feel certain I'll pull myself together in time to do well for the rest of the course... well, as well as I ever do. It's just... that was a Day, that was.
*sigh*
And I haven't even investigated the food providing possibilities of this year at college.
But I did go to the supermarket on the way home and buy sandwich bags. That should cover it. Friday is two lessons with a lunch break, so I shall bring lunch.
and possibly even formally join the course.
*sigh*
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no subject
Date: 2011-09-14 08:08 pm (UTC)You should be able to find the Woman in White on the Gutenberg Project since its copyright has expired.