Registering for Classes

So at home, registering for classes is primarily done online, although I am sure there are people who still fill out the little paper and hand it in personally at the Registrar's Office. In any case, you list the classes you would like to take, get your advisor to sign off on them, and you turn it in. When I register online, I know immediately if there is still room in the class, and if I have a spot or am waitlisted, and I get a confirmation email.

Here in Erfurt, however, the system is rather different. For the first week of classes, you scramble with potentially countless other people to get into the class. There is no registration beforehand; you just show up, sign your name on a paper that does not guarantee anything, and you start taking notes, buying books, and choosing paper topics. The second week, you try desperately to pick up classes to make up for the ones you have already been kicked out of. And then in the third and fourth weeks, you actually register for the classes. Supposedly the start of the semester is intended to give you the chance to 'shop around' before committing to classes. Which is why I have books sitting on my shelf which were for classes I didn't end up taking. I had to buy the books in order to study for a quiz given the first day over some of the course material. This quiz also determined who got to stay in the class; if you scored well, you could stay, if you did poorly, there's the door. Needless to say, buying the books is still no guarantee...

The result is that I have been attending classes for three weeks now, and I have been reading books, doing homework, and researching future paper topics, but only today did I actually register for them. I do not even know for certain that I will actually get to continue in the class. I assume that I am past the stage of getting the boot, even though no one has ever really told me otherwise.

At any rate, yesterday I picked up the paperwork for registering for the classes. For each subject area, such as history or literature, there were stapled sheets listing all of the courses, sometimes twice if the course is offered as both orientation (doesn't count towards degree) and qualification (does count towards degree). Each listing had the course name, the professor's name, the number of credits, the course number, and a barcode. Apparently these barcodes are the 'be-all-that-ends-all' in the course listings. So since I am taking literature, history, and German courses, I had to pick up the listings for all three of those areas, and of the maybe 10 or 15 sheets of paper I got as a result, I had to put a total of 6 checkmarks on them. THEN I had to staple them to another stack of papers, which had my name, student ID number, and my Mentor's [advisor's] signature on it, which also [needlessly] had the interdiscplinary course listings attached to it. So altogether, I probably had a stack of 20 or so papers, with 6 checkmarks on maybe as many pages, if not less. What an incredible waste of paper, and this from a university that charges the students for any copies the professors make, including the syllabus handed out the first day! And all because the barcode is simply the only way to register for classes...

Oh and by the way...How did I turn in all of those papers? Why, dropping them in a wooden box, of course! How else could you do such a thing?

I cannot help but to laugh silently to myself, to find some of these hoops unnecessary, and to contemplate much more efficient and logical systems. But as my brother reminds me, these experiences, even if they are ridiculous, are still part of the reason why I am studying abroad. I am living a different culture, and one that obviously has a different opinion of how to handle the task of course registration!

And I suppose he is right. BUT, I do take pleasure in the fact that whenever I describe the registration system at universities in the U.S., German students 9 times out of 10 say, "That system makes so much more sense! I wish we did it that way..." Somehow this little triumph always makes my patriotism flare...