This is especially true considering the circular logic surrounding registration every quarter. Supposedly the system has evolved beyond the archaic rituals of open registration, where dazed and confused college students grab frantically at course cards i
n an uncontrollable J.C. Penny Red Tag Sale Frenzy in order to complete their schedule before everything is CLOSED. Registration at RIT is surprisingly similar (only the frenzy in question goes something like this...)
It's 5:45 AM. Despite a minimal amount of sleep I crawl across the floor and grope for the phone. I wait for a dial tone in a nightmarish daze and dial. I receive either a hideous busy signal or a ring, the most treasured and anticipated sound of a
ll. I realize that only that ring can end the monotonous and mind numbing cycle of hanging-up, redialing, and waiting expectantly... will it ring? No, damn it, busy again. Or worse, I hear it ring, but hang up anyway out of pure muscular memory. But n
o, not this quarter. This time the system had to taunt and tantalize me. It rang... and rang, and rang, and rang, and connected. Wait, I hear a voice. It's a male voice telling me that... damn. He's just a recording telling me that all of the circuit
s are busy. Why not let me continue in the now comfortable tedium of the busy signal? What cruel farce brought me to this recording? My heart was pounding and my mind was running amok with the possibility that I had Finally Made It, only to realize tha
t their intention was to dash my dreams with a "try again please." It was as if the system was trying to drive me over the edge of insanity or depression (whichever comes first). I try again, and again a thousand times more. I hear something, a break in
the faint rhythm playing in my ear. It is a ring. Oh joyous morning! I arise to find my course sheet as I mechanically begin to respond to the harsh commands of my touch tone phone. I enter my first course; it is a long shot but I am determined to tr
y anyway... CLOSED. I go to my alternate and I am denied again. But I continue to enter numbers regardless until I finally hear the voice telling me that I am finished; my seventeen credit goal has been achieved. So, I hang up, reminding myself not to
redial, and sink into bed for another half hour of sleep before my first class.
But technological mishaps at RIT certainly do not stop there. How about those library terminals? You know those made in 1960 midget monitors with outsides that are yellowing like two hundred year old parchment paper. And when you turn them on you g
et a withered squirm of green light flickering across the warped screen. It is then when you realize that you have not reached a vax terminal but an elaborate labyrinth of library services. Of course when you attempt to extract the very same services fr
om a living, breathing, flesh covered human being they just direct you cordially back to the demon machine.
Continued on page 2
|
|
