Rampid Byter

The one word I could use to describe UC would be bureaucratic. I have never, even in the Army, had so much trouble dealing with a group of individuals that hold an office or title. The paperwork system at UC, while somehow managing to be functional, given any situation deviating from norm requiring even the slightest more effort will single handedly double the irritation for the requester. It seems that in the going on six years that I’ve somehow managed to tolerate the bureaucracy of the system my tolerance has reached its peak. If you’re not familiar with the system I can give you a quick introduction to how things seem to work. Given a situation where a given person has a document that must be quickly processed in order to take affect, then you might as well advise them to sit on the document for about three weeks hoping it will grow into a golden egg. Paperwork does not move quickly through UC, hell I know an individual that had to wait over one year just to receive their degree due to a professor haphazardly forgetting to input final grades for an entire class. I do have names to back this up should someone from UC like to argue this point I’d be happy to name drop the professor as well. Considering defamation lawsuits I’ll leave this point made, but without identification of the individuals.

Let us concentrate on even the system used to register students, and UCs wonderful policy of course availability. Should you, the student, need to take four required classes during the quarter, well, good luck. The UC planning committees can seem to think of nothing but money, and depending on the number of suckers…. I mean students (sorry all start with ‘s’ anyway) they can put in a seat determines the course availability. So considering the number of students pursuing the same classes as you, during the same quarter, you’ve got only about a 50/50 shot at having the course available. Then there is what I call the UC class paradox. Should the course be available to you during the quarter you require, well, then a nice little time availability overlapping occurs. This same class, that you require mind you, will be offered at both the same time and days as other required classes. As if to somehow drag out your graduation longer these classes tend to be exactly as the same times (day or night) or they will share an overlapping day at least. Typically UC courses are either Tuesday or Thursday or Wednesday and Friday. Unless you don’t work you can always opt for the four days a week class that is offered during the morning, and afternoon. For them anything is possible, but for evening students you may plan to extend your school engagement by at least another year.

The most fantastic part of the course registration system is the separation provided to make sure that you are truly taking advantage of having multiple web browsers open, or using those new multiple tab pages from within your browser of choice. I’d stick with IE myself when dealing with anything UC on the web. UC is particular about engaging web development from students trained at the school, whom have no concept of document object models, nor the differences between IE and non-IE browsers.

Anyway, so once you go to check out those nifty courses, make sure you’ve printed out the required class listing, and are prepared for at least a half hour battle to get your next quarter courses just right. You’ll need to first have your transcript ready (or knowledge of completed classes), listing of remaining required courses, a calendar, then you’ll need to open One Stop’s website to go to a page to search for your courses. At this point you could argue that you could open another web browser to perform a degree audit instead of using a transcript, but clearly you’ve never used the degree audit before. But I digress, from there you’ll want to open another browser, log into One Stop to register for classes so the registration screen is viewable. At this point you’ll want to start skimming through the online listing of courses, be sure to copy and paste them into Notepad so you can have the call number, dates, and times ready. Then you’ll want to search for more classes, copy and paste them into Notepad from the displayed page.

Once you’ve gathered a good amount (if any courses are available that is) of courses that you need to take you’ll have to start sifting through to the ones that don’t overlap. In the end from a list that may contain, say five classes, you’ll probably end up with at least two. You may even get lucky to find three available courses. At this point close the class availability page, then switch over to the registration page. Cross your fingers and start registering for the classes by inputting the information from your Notepad document into the required fields on the registration page. Hit submit when you’re done, then wait for the message that the class is unavailable. You’ll get either unavailable, course has been closed, or maybe registering pending administrative approval. Congratulations five layers of irritation later you’re now a guaranteed student of the defunct system. That is, of course, unless you receive a letter, yes mailed letter, that your class has been closed due to lack of enrollment about one week before the class was set to begin. The powers that be will close your class one week before the quarter begins, then complains that students still wait till the last minute to register. Given you’ve just received only a weeks notice I can see why there may be an influx of last minute registrations taking place in some situations.

Oh, there is much, much more I could complain about, but I’m out of time. Stay tuned to future warnings of UC.