Journal for tbrounst

(Sorry for the late posting. The internet is down in my room right now. They say they'll fix it tomorrow, so hopefully I can get back onto a regular posting schedule again soon. Of course, Sunday we have another trip, so I'm not sure I'll be able to post after that. I guess we'll see!)

So, I finally registered for classes. My schedule is locked in place. It was pretty easy, really. For visiting students, we had to visit an office at a certain time depending on last name. For example, yesterday was A, B and T (or something…I can’t remember). Clearly they aren’t going in strict alphabetical order. I think my favorite part is they have a special hour and a half set aside for last names beginning with “Mc.” Overall, it was a painless process. I got there, waited in line for five minutes, went into the room, handed them my sheet and sat as they typed stuff into a computer for a few minutes. Then I left. To put this in perspective, the walk to campus was longer than the amount of time I spent doing this. So, registering for classes was easy.

Registering for my English seminar, on the other hand...well, that’s a fun little story. The way English seminar registration works is that at 9:00 they start letting people into a room where someone asks you what seminar you want. You tell them, and are then led to a desk with a piece of paper on it. The person writes down your name and ID number, hands you a sheet of paper saying your in the class and you’re on your way. They have three or four people doing this, and the process itself is pretty short.

So, they start letting people in at 9:00. What time should you show up then? I showed up at 7:40 and was one of the last people in line. To be fair, I talked to my friends who showed up at 6:30 and they were only 30 people ahead of me. First place, the people who showed up earliest? They got their at 2:30. As they explained it, they just came straight from the pub and passed out for a few hours.

To make matters worse, each class only had two or three spots for visiting students. This means, despite the fact that I had 10 classes on my list of potentials, only two were still open by the time I signed up. There was a very disheartening sheet of paper next to the room listing the classes that were taken, and we learned to curse that paper…

From what all the students said, this seemed like a terrible system. We had to show up stupidly early in the morning, and even then there was a good chance that you couldn’t take what you wanted. It had a huge amount of undo stress and anxiety, was frustrating, and was just all around hard on the students. I heard a lot of people grumbling that they wished registration would just be online. Keep it simple, and don’t make me leave my room at 6:00 a.m. (a completely justified feeling).

Yet, thinking about it a bit longer, there’s something very good about this system. It’s not arbitrary. Having people register in order of last name, or by random numbers or something like that is arbitrary; I get the class I want or I don’t despite whatever I do. Here, the odds of you getting the class you want are directly proportional to what you do. Am I willing to sacrifice a night of sleep for this seminar? Or, do I have enough options that I can show up late confident that something is open? How much do I want this class opposed to that one? Add in the random game theory of when everyone else is showing up, along with what classes they want, and it’s actually a pretty interesting system.

That said, I also don’t believe that they created the system this way simply to create an awesome logical problem, nor do I believe that they did it to encourage human interaction and meeting face to face. Simply put, I believe they have this system in place because it’s what they’ve always done.

Somewhere in the past they decided they wanted a non-random, non-arbitrary system for figuring out who gets what seminar classes, and they decided on a first come first serve system. They put it in the morning so it would be out of the way early and wouldn’t disrupt classes. The Irish are practical, and this was the most logical and simple solution to their problem. As for why they don’t do it online, that itself would lead to either an arbitrary decision of who registers first, or would create an immense flood of traffic, pretty much killing the internet for everyone (the internet is not that good here). Beyond that, while the internet has been a force in America for around 15 years now, from my understanding that’s not the case with Ireland. It probably has only emerged, really, in the last 10 years or so, meaning it’s possible that they simply haven’t bothered to do an online system yet.

And why would they? The old system works well enough. I said the Irish were practical: why change something that works? Besides, I wouldn’t be surprised if the teachers got some small thrill out of seeing us out there at 2:30.

Overall, though, it’s a system that rewards planning and dedication, and has no random element to it. It’s a system where you get what you want or you don’t, and there is a very clear reason for it. And I think this is something that’s important to the Irish people: you control your own fate. For a country with a history of oppression and being conquered, that’s something quite valuable.