Posted: Mon Oct 16, 2006 5:18 am Post subject: Paperless Society - pff
I started my counselling training last month, and to date some of my class (including me) have yet to be able to enrol with the University our course is affiliated with. Howcum? Because although they insisted on us completing a University application form as well as the course application forms back in July, the University decided that this year, they'll require everyone to register online regardless of whether a paper form had already been completed - so they sent out an email to each student with a link to the registration page.
Except that they never sent out the emails until I started kicking up a fuss on our behalf last week (they told our college that they sent them out in September, cheeky...), and they've still only sent out 2/3 of them, and it's a month into the course.
I suppose it's teething troubles with a new system, but they didn't keep anyone informed during the process, not even the college we're studying with. Of course, this also means that until they have people enrolled, they don't get any money from our college. I hope they manage to sort things out soon, but meanwhile I'm stuck without student status which would make my travel to the course cheaper, never mind the new mac I 'need' for my studies.
And some of my fellow students found their emails in their spam folders, of course - I've been watching mine closely for the last couple of months just in case, but no sign of a message from the university.
Joined: May 25, 2003 Posts: 4752 Location: Santa Barbara, CA
Posted: Mon Oct 16, 2006 9:12 pm Post subject:
Man, tell me about it. I think the biggest problem is that not only people but also automated systems (just like trinity and bugzilla! yes, foot in mouth...) are built on the fact that e-mail is a reliable system. Unfortunately it was a good idea that was taken advantage of by folks who twisted it into spam. Now we're dealing with the ramifications of having an open system of communication that is nearly free. It really would be an amazing economical study to track down the factors that have allowed spam to flourish and analyze the rate of return and economic system that evolved within a structure constructed upon principles of free trade.
Regardless, I'm sorry about all the troubles that you've experienced with your university; I've had the same thing happen to me myself (man, I have an address which for some reason I can't even unsubscribe from Apple's own mailing lists!).
I've come to view IM as a great solution myself for one-on-one interaction since there's not only implicitly "presence" but also an easy availability of whitelisting via buddy lists. Obviously IM will not work for automated systems, though.
At least they're sending out e-mails, though, even if the "protections" required by these times route them to black holes. It is a start
In the end, I managed to get the right bloke on the phone at the enrolments dept., and he just led me through registering online over the phone - so now I've been able to tell everyone else how to do it - go, me... Hmmm... so in the end, it was still a paperless process, but it involved actual talking to make it work. Interesting. It's the squeaky wheel that gets the grease (I learned that from Lucy Van Pelt).
Yeah, well I normally look more 'sedate' than that in passport-type photos, but this time I said to myself, Self, said I, Damn it, it's a student card, and I'm going to look like a *student*...
Pronunciation: Padmavyuha rhymes with Pad-mer-View-her (with the stress on the italicised bits, and the R's not sounded, like euh rather than err) - or since the difference in pronunciations of the same written text is inevitable, here it is IPA-stylie: 'pædməvɩ'uhə
I hope that comes out as well on your browser as it does in Safari. I'm a bit new to this IPA character unicode-quoting, and it may work better in hex than in decimal.
Anyway, as photos go, it manages to make me look less than 43, dontcha think? It is weird though: you order your card online, and then it takes a week or two to make your card up, so they send you this fake one as a pdf in the meantime, to get you into your student union building. And when they've made my card I'm going to have to go to South London to the Uni student union building to collect it, because they won't post it to my home address. Still, it's better than living in a war zone. (self irony)
Joined: May 25, 2003 Posts: 4752 Location: Santa Barbara, CA
Posted: Thu Oct 19, 2006 9:27 pm Post subject:
Man you should see my passport photo. I look like I'm on bizarre drugs and about to go totally insane. Probably not too far off from the truth
Personally I liked the disclaimer at the AAA office that was something along the lines of "we're not responsible if you don't like your photo; we're not professional photographers"
...et maintenant je suis un lapin heureux... this happy bunny having registered (finally!) with college now gets a 15% student discount on a new macbook pro - which will be the whizzbang version (core 2 duo, 2Gb RAM, f/w 800 port 15") that didn't exist a couple of weeks ago when I would have bought it if the college hadn't delayed me - hoorah! (funny old world )
Now I get to experience the full force of NeoOffice Intel (and wave goodbye to my last remaining classic apps - sigh, PhotoShop 5 was good to me...) interesting, I had to order over the phone because I'm not logged into the university's internet, and the sales chap dissuaded me from choosing the glossy screen - he said most people find it a pain rather than a pleasure unless they've got a permanent non-shiny workspace to keep it.
Okay, maintenant je suis bondant! Turns out that it's actually a 25% student discount, because it's the 2.33GHz model that's on order... - fastest thing on one wheel...
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