April Fools

What are around two houndred and fifty students who are standing squeezed in a narrow corridor, threatening people, swearing or plainly sweating?
Students who want to register for language courses in my wonderful department.

And it was not even as though they wanted to fool us, they meant it.
Usually, the application for obligatory and non-obligatory courses happened around the end of semester, everybody had to hand in a slip of paper with the courses they intended to take next semester on it. If it was a course fromt the "Hauptstudium", the main phase, they had to show another slip of paper to the teacher in the first session of the course saying they had finished all the basic courses they were meant to do before registering for this one. That's it.

But one day, someone exceedingly bright came up with the idea that this was too difficult.

Alright, due to the usual timetable problems which tend to occur in the last weeks of the holidays or the first weeks of the new semester, a lot of students had had to change their courses because other courses were at the same time and were asking whether they, please, could do another course of the same kind on another day, etc., etc. Alright, maybe that is rather fiddly... but still...

Immitating role models in the south as well as Berlin, they came up with a daring idea - everyone should be summoned to sign up personally at the beginning of semester - today - when everybody knew which courses they were be in and how their timetable looked like.
In theory, this may be a very nice idea - but somehow they seem to have underestimated the number of people doing these language courses and the amount of time it would to deal with everyone individually.

We each got a number and were told to wait. The whole process started at 11:00. I had number 46, my friend 43 and we were told to come back at around 12:00 o'clock. Around 250 numbers were handed out that day.
When I came back at eleven thirty to be on the safe side, the lucky person with number 22 just left the office.
So what happened inside?

1. More waiting, this time on chair, not standing in a corridor packed with people
2. Interview with one of the language teachers. "So what courses do you want to take this semester?" - "Ah, the Non-obligatory Grammar course! My colleague X will deal with it."
3. Waiting for said colleague to finish filling in application form with other student.
4. "So you want to have a place in Grammer? Let me just copy your details onto this superflous green piece of paper for us so we take up even more time. Look here, a slip of paper saying which course you have signed up for, so you don't forget until next week.
5. Waiting for the computer to get free to sign self up on courselists.

Well, that's the short version without complications. It is even more fun if you lack the paper saying you already have finished the courses and are technically entitled to move on to the main part - if it wasn't for the one paper your Professor still had to correct.

SO stupid! The whole system! ´Ridiculous!
And rather unfair, too, since they had started handing out the numbers before eleven, when they had said everything would start at eleven.
I really wonder how anybody can think of this inefficient way of doing it as "easier".
I do hope this was the first and last time they dried to so with school....

Apart from that... it's spring over here, full of warm winds, gentle breezes, clouds, I go to bed crying and wake up smiling. Spring, as usual.

Logic

Congratulations to myself for failing my first test of the semester truly disastrously.

I never had such a blackout before. Well, not that I knew that much to start with, the only reason why I wanted to write the test at all was a vague notion that even though I do not need it at all, it had annoyed me so much I just wanted to write and pass this test. Ah, well. Dabei sein ist alles.

Well, that didn't work out. I don't even need it, but still... it is not a nice feeling to fail even a course you really do not need at all. AND I handed in homework for it all the semester, too. Pfft. This really... irks me.

Anyway. If I am ever mad enough to take such a course again just to prove me I can think logically (which never worked in school), I'll try and pick one which is not run by a physicist. It may have been a lot easier if we hadn't had mathematical examples all the way.

Well, now I feel stupid. Not that that is new, either.

I spent a great hour after finishing this horrible nightmare in Planten un Blomen, Hamburg's most beautiful park, taking pictures and trying out a new lens. I am in love with my reflex camera. The only problem is that I am the only member of my family who has not inherited my father's or both my grandfather's talent for taking the most amazing pictures. Quite an alarming number of the pictures I make are even blurred. It is a shame.

Otherwise the start of semester was rather promising. A great, really interesting course on Postmodern Fiction, a bit of luck with my other courses and even an extremely positive surprise with my Phonetics and Phonology course. After the usual introductory "Strict-punctuality-and-yes-everybody-has-to-read-and-prepare-everything-even-those-who-do-not-want-a-to-write-a-paper-because-preparation-is-essential-in-my-courses" -speech of Prof. Hühn I am at least convinced that it will not be a boring semester.

I am bored, therefore I have to take random nicked tests...

Your Threesome by soleta
username
age
middle name
location	On large statue in Wellington
Partner the first	Viggo Mortensen
Partner the second	Billy Boyd
Created with quill18's MemeGen 3.0!

It's not as though I didn't know this anyway...


Postatem obscuri lateris nescitis.
"You do not know the power of the Dark
Side." There are two possibilities: you
are a Star Wars geek, or you are unreasoningly
scary.


Which Weird Latin Phrase Are You?
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Bwhahaa.