The Day From Hell

Posted by Colin Harvey Oct 6, 2009

I'm into my second week at University, and yesterday I really really wondered why I'd given up paid employment to do this.

The IT system that BSU uses has error messages so lacking in meaning (they boil down to "you can't log on but we're not going to explain why") that I was left to puzzle it out for myself over the weekend why I couldn't access my timetable. Without a timetable the student literally cannot function -- it really is as important as that.

I was awake at 3.30am racking my brains, and by the time it was daybreak I was exhausted, but had an answer. I dashed off emergency messages from my home PC to my lecturers. The replies all said, "You need to see Student Admin." So taking a chance that I wasn't missing a lecture I caught the bus in -cost £5.70-- and found scenes of utter chaos.

There were hundreds of people trying to access their timetables while at the same time fully a third of the PCs weren't working. All communication except lectures is via PC, so perhaps ensuring all machines are available might be considered a priority, but BSU consider it much more important that they spend the money on widening the driveway...

It emerged afterwards that no-one could access the timetable until 11am on Monday, but posting a message on places like the student portal hadn't occurred to Student Admin. Nonetheless, I managed to snaffle a printed copy of my timetable (and saw that I'd been allocated a module I had less than zero interest in, while I'd been bumped off one I actively wanted to do. So all that milling around choosing modules last week was basically a waste of time).

Back at the Library I noticed a piece of paper -- a single piece-- on a desk giving detailed instructions on how to access the timetable. None of our presentations --including the one on IT-- had mentioned that to access the timetable, we needed to preface our ID with 'Academic\' and without it, we would be locked out.

I wrote a mail asking for a change of module, and having done everything I needed to do by 11 o'clock, I saw that I had nothing until 4 o'clock. So rather than sitting around, despite the cost, I went home again. When I came back at 4, I learned that the lecture I had come for only took place on alternate weeks -- starting next week....again, the information was on the timetable, but no one had though to explain what the little numbers in the bottom right corner were.

I hadn't realized until now that students are expected to learn by osmosis. So I'm going to practice my osmosizing and take (several more) deep breaths at the thought that one sheet of paper cost me £11.40, several wasted hours, and about ten years off my life due to raised blood pressure.