The more I know, the less I understand

[austin_dern]

One of my classes, we hope to move from noon to 6 pm to avoid a conflict some students have. I went to the old classroom at noon today, to redirect any students who hadn't heard. They'd all heard, no confusion. Usually you only see that sort of behavior in students hearing about snow days.

To move the class, I need a letter signed by all the students confirming that's fine with them. The official roster of students has dwindled each day the past week. Today, I had as many students as last Monday. I assume this is connected to the online registration system, which works by some bidding method I've never understood because nobody explains how it works to mere faculty. Just every now and then students come for help, and all we can do is that pleasant, vacant nod normal people have when a Trekkie talks about Star Trek: Generations, and agree something out to be possible.

Case in point: A student this morning wanted to add my class. But its scheduled time conflicts with a lecture she needs, so she can't sign up online. If we sign a waiver she could sign up manually, if the Dean's Office approves, but the Deanery traditionally rejects permission to be in two lectures at once. But if the class moves there's no conflict, so if she signs the note to move the class she can sign up for it because they'll be asked about permission to sign up for a class they're expected to give permission to re-schedule. However she has to sign up for another course to take in case she can't drop that and take this one instead.

I asked her, and a secretary, why she can't sign up for four courses and then add this one when it gets moved, which got a detailed explanation that my class currently conflicts with another she has to take. Well, yes, but why not sign up for all her classes except mine and the backup, and sign for whichever is needed later? Because if didn't get into either, she'd be short a class.

I think the problem may be my grad student life trained me to ignore deadlines and rules, since the department secretaries always straightened things out. Case in point, I submitted my first Plan of Study -- the semester-by-semester roster of courses I planned to take -- on the very last day of my last term, a month after my thesis defense. I still don't get why it's so terrifying to add a class after the second day of the second week of the term, though, and the more they explained the more I felt helpless and despairing.

Trivia: The propellant tanks for Gemini Launch Vehicle 9 were the first carried from Martin-Denver's fabricating plants to Martin-Baltimore by rail; previous tanks had travelled by air. They arrived 16 August 1965. Source: Project Gemini Technology and Operations: A Chronology, James M Grimwood, Barton C. Hacker, Peter J Vorzimmer. NASA SP-4002.

Currently Reading: Codebreakers: The Inside Story of Bletchley Park, F H Hinsley, Alan Stripp, Editors.

Comments

[porsupah.livejournal.com]

Somehow, this meshes excellently with the intrinsic logic of the peninsula. ^_^;

Of course, I can't really comment, as my experience in BSc-dom was of the rather straightforward "you're registered for this course? Fine. Here's your schedule." nature - which rather deflates such academic excitement. It'll never catch on, of course.

Indeed, I've not experienced a great deal of flexibility in my *cough* scholastic endeavors, though I did make some notable headway in a school renowned for its sporting repertoire. The standard issue was a choice of two "games" per term, Monday (evening), Wednesday (afternoon), and Saturday (afternoon), typically things like hockey and cricket. (The latter being not so bad for pandas, as it's possible to position oneself a bit out of the way, and avoid too much sudden action. Being a summer game, that can make for a reasonably pleasant, if bookless, way of spending an hour or two out in the open)

Following some negotiation, I wound up with art classes (later shifted to weights), the inauguration of the "computer run" (nominally a "cross country run", followed by classes in computing - ie, a pleasant stroll, followed by us teaching ourselves, not atypically involving the exchange of protection cracking techniques), and archery (where I rose to school level, oddly enough. I'd recommend the sport, especially if the calm precision of something like snooker appeals).

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

See, I don't know any of this stuff since, somehow, I avoided ever having any real conflict between classes. The worst I ever had was a block of three classes in following periods, but since they were all on the same campus that was no problem either. And athletics ... for undergraduate and graduate school I got in just as the university got rid of whatever vestigial remnant of athletic requirements remained. (And, for graduate school, just as the faint trace of needing a foreign language were eliminated.)

Cricket, from what I've seen of it, does seem to be a sport along my speed, since it seems to involve standing around while things happen not around you, and if something does happen to involve you you get a lot of warning. I'm not good at more fast-moving, sudden-response sports like basketball, or golf, or backgammon.