2000 Words

Well I went to registration today. It was the usual shambles. I started queueing to get the first form I needed, and after about 10 minutes some bloke asked if I was doing BA. Turned out that the BA queue had got so long that everyone thought it was just one big queue for everything, and that the science queue was about a quarter of the size. Fucksakes. So we went and joined the other queue. Got my paperwork, was told I had to resit a module.

"HAVE to resit it?"

"Well you have a resit form there."

"But I only failed it by 2 marks. I scored 38% on it, the highest I could get is 40%, so surely there's no point?"

"Well you'll need to discuss that with your department."

"Mkay."

Stood in the queue for the first part of the CompSci registration process for about half an hour and then got to enjoy having Chris Loftus repeatedly cock up my modules choices. Because I was also changing schemes he had to change my core modules. He put something on the form saying it was core, but I didn't have it on my own list which I had made last night by closely studying the schemes database. I pointed this out.

"The website must be wrong," he said, "you'll need to take that up with Lynda." Then he stopped and looked at the form he was reading the core modules from. "Oh no, I'm looking at the wrong scheme."

*sigh*

He corrected it and carried on asking me which optional modules I wanted to do. I reeled off my preferred choices. He marked them down.

"I thought that module's code was CS32110?" I remarked as he wrote something completely different on my form. he looked back at his paperwork.

"Damn!" He said and changed it again. He crossed out no less than 3 of his own mistakes. I then queued in the other queue for CompSci, which I've never really seen the point of. All they do is count the modules to make sure they don't come to more than 120 credits and then ask you if you've thought about your CS390 project. Oh and they handed me an excellent invite for a wine and biscuits evening tomorrow to welcome use back to the department:

Those last 2 lines are genuine. Seriously, that's how it was written. I half expected "hugs and kisses".

After that I was told to join the queue for the very last bit which was up the stairs. When I got to the stairs there was a vast queue going up them. I joined the back of the queue, and then thought it sensible to ask if I were in the right queue. The woman I asked seemed very helpful and told me that it was indeed the queue for the last part of the whole chirade. Thank god for that.

45 minuites later I was at the top of the stairs. After a while I became aware that the queue I was in did not stretch into the part of the building where I was to hand in my form. I was in the wrong fucking queue. Arse. Went and found my way into the queue for the science's where I met up, once again, with Terry.

"Have you finished your industrial year report?" He asked.

"I've done a lot, but it's certainly not finished yet. Do you know when it has to be handed in?"

"Yeah. Tomorrow afternoon."

Ah. I was sure the deadline was approaching, but I hadn't realised it was approaching that fast. He told me where the information was, I was sceptical as I'd looked at that particular page only that night and not seen it.

Eventually I got to hand my form in. The woman on the desk seemed really perturbed that I'd not written in 6 inch letters "NO I DO NOT WANT TO RESIT THE SHIT MODULE I FAILED 2 YEARS AGO" on the resit form.

"We need to have a decision either way, otherwise you could come back at the end of the year and claim you weren't given the opportunity."

Like it really mattered. I wasn't about to fork out £20 to try and get another 2 marks; you can't score above 40 in a resit, even if you've attained super-human powers overnight, and my "fail" mark was 38. In the grand scheme of things it wasn't about to make a lot of difference to my degree so I signed the piece of paper to say I wasn't bothered.

When I got home I checked the part of the website Terry had mentioned and sure enough there was the information on when the report had to be handed in, and sure enough he was correct about the date and time. I dug out the notes on how to write the report, grabbed the laptop and started reviewing.

"The report should be approximately 5000 words" stated the notes. A quick wordcount revealed only 3000. Shee-ite. It's a good job I'm a fast typer really. I've already halved that figure to 1000 words remaining within two or three hours, and the notes say "about 5000 words" not "no less than 5000 words" so it isn';t a grave crime not to use that many words.

Quality, not quantity and all that. Actually I'm tempted to just stick a picture in and call it done. They are after-all, supposedly worth a thousand words.

Better get on with it. I'll want to proof read it and stuff tomorrow. Then I'll have to print it and all the rest. God, I hope I have some printer credit.