Ring-Around-the-Rosie

Firstly, I am sorry for the lack of blogging on my part. I have been meaning to post several things for a while, but it has been a hectic week or so. I will hopefully write something about my recent trip to Helsingborg and Malmö soon, but right want to write (read, vent) about my two day battle, which I believe to have lost, with the insanity of Swedish bureaucracy.

A Day of Queues
Yesterday morning I took my Swedish language final exam and God-willing passed it. It wasn't too difficult, but some of the grammar nuisances (sic) tripped me up (i.e. Swedish nouns have 4 different endings depending if they are definite/indefinite/plural/singular).

Immediately afterward, about 30 of us UC-students ran over to the public library to print out our transcripts and enrollment forms because today was the day we were to register for classes! Now classes start in 5 days, and although we have already enrolled in the international classes, many of us want to take actual departmental classes for our major. This requires us to personally convince each head of the department to take us on as students for classes. Of course the library had one printer and only 2 librarians, so the day of lines began early. However, we all eventually got them (at 30 cents a page!) and headed to our orientation for exchange students.

The orienation place was packed with international students, masters students, and exchange students. We found our room and proceeded to wait for over 2 hours to receive a packet of info about Lund, our email addresses, and student id numbers which could have easily been emailed to us. I have never waited in such a long time for such a small reward-- it was worse than the line for Disneyland's Pirates of the Caribbean ride (and an even more disappointing and pathetic experience, if you can imagine that!).

We had to zig-zag along the rows, up to the top and then back down--
the picture shows 1/2 of the line. The guy's face in the 2nd row says it all.

Back when we were still smiling

And then the smiles faded-- especially after they didn't even have
a form for Jess. She waited in line for nothing!

Now, armed with our packets, we headed to the departments full of eager anticipation to register at last for classes. How disillusion. The political science department, my primary interest, was completely unhelpful. After being referred to different people and different floors (it was clear nobody knew quite what to do with us), we finally found the office to register. However, the office hours were from 10am to 12pm, and it was well past 3pm. So it was essentially a fruitless day (except for the small banana I consumed after the exam), especially for Jess because she weren't able to get our key copied, a bike, or her orientation packet!

The Run-around
Today began promising with both Jess and I having clear agendas to accomplish: her, to get her registration forms and a bike and I, to register for a political science, Russian culture, and Russian language class. After waiting outside the political science department office for a while, someone finally shows up at 10am. However, I was quickly informed that I need to see someone else to register, but after finding her, she referred me to someone else, but her office hours did not start till 1pm! Slightly frustrated, I went to the Eastern European studies dept hoping for some better luck. Just after I located the person I needed to talk to, she explained that she had to go to meeting till around noon. I was beginning to think there was a conspiracy to keep me from attending classes, especially after the Slavic languages building moved locations without bothering to tell anyone. After over 30 minutes of searching the area, I finally found out that the department has moved to the same place as the Eastern European studies! And guess who I needed to talk to so I could register for classes?? Ms. Meeting lady!

After two cups of tea and a couple chapters of a good book, I regained some semblance of my sanity and tried the Russian culture/Slavic languages lady once again. She was in and was able to help me...sort of. Apparently all the classes I was hoping to take are in Swedish, but I can possibly get on the waiting list for the lone English one if I talk to the instructor of the course. I go down to his office only to discover that of course he is out and won't be back till 2:45. Perfect.

During this time, I go to my favorite Poli Sci department and wait with my UC friends for someone to show up. When the lady comes, she has no idea why our coordinator didn't inform her that we intended to take departmental classes! However, she said to come back tomorrow and they will try to work something out.

After going to an informational meeting/campus organization fair and getting some free cookies, I felt ready to try to talk to the instructor for the Eastern European classes in English. After waiting for over a half hour, he never shows up. So I went with Jess (who has by now still not gotten her registration forms but has purchased a nice bike) to look at some potential housing options. The first two were not great and would mean she would be living with 40+ year old men. But the last one is with a great family in a beautiful home built in 1905 with a garden and dog. We are praying hard that the family picks Jess from the pool of applicants.

Meanwhile, I go back to the instructor's office and find him there! He was super energetic thanks to a Swedish energy drink and a coffee, but he told me that I am not allowed to take a Russian language class because I need to know Swedish first. I tried to convince him that I can just communicate in Russian, but apparently the Russian language instructor doesn't allow it. He also said that the only Eastern European class is full and my chances of getting in do not look good. I thank him and leave completely exhausted and drained having once again accomplished nothing. It also means that there is a very, very good chance that I will have the privileged of becoming a super senior next year!

So, morals of the story: Don't ever, ever take online registering for granted (the UCD class reg. site SISWEB will be my firstborn child's name) and don't ever get into a fight with Swedish (university) bureaucracy if you value your life or your sanity.