Please remember that you are choosing to read my opinions.

Bureaucracy


I read SandyQull's blog today and she is questioning the appeal of anarchy. It led me to thinking about government and a story came to mind that I thought I would tell. It’s a little story about an experience that I had this week.

This is the time of year that my university designates for pre-registration. Pre-registration is basically time allotted for students who are currently enrolled to register before new students start registering. Depending on how many hours you have taken, you are given a week in which you can register. Seniors get priority because they are close to graduating and have less flexibility. A senior may only need a few key classes to graduate and without this priority they would not be able to get those classes. Freshmen, on the other hand, have more choices when classes start closing. They can always take a different class.

This semester I am a senior. I am approximately 23 hours from graduation, and though I'll probably be here two semesters I ended up taking 21 hours of classes. In my case, as it is with many colleges, 18 hours is the maximum allowed work load a student can take without special permission. There are reasons for this, of course. 18 hours is a tough workload if you have classes that require a lot of time outside of class or if you work. This semester, however, I figured that it wouldn't hurt to load up on classes because I'm almost done and, if I wanted, I could graduate at the end of next semester.

Interlude

At this point it is necessary to explain certain unpleasant aspects of bureaucracy. One of its central features is its impersonal nature and inflexibility. Let's say that you want to return a product to a department store that you have lost the proof of purchase to. It’s obviously from the store, wrapped and packaged and never opened, but because you have no receipt, you can't return it. They tell you that you can exchange it but you tell them you don't want to exchange it, you want to return it and get your money back. You tell them that it was a bad purchase. You are a compulsive shopper and spent your paycheck on a neat looking new age surround sound speaker system/ laser light show/ automatic popcorn popper and you really don't need it, you say. But there is no way around regulations.

This is far from how things used to be handled. Stores used to be responsive to the needs of people. You could take products back as long as the original packaging was still intact. This type of inflexible bureaucratic nonsense has been steadily increasing since the early 1980's.

Where bureaucracy really goes astray is when it can no longer keep track of itself. Changes in policies happen and take time to circulate. That was my problem.

Day One

I had 18 hours of classes before my advisor tried to add the one class I absolutely needed to my schedule, so I needed permission to go over 18 hours. My advisor tells me that to do this I would need to see the head of my department or the Dean. I go to the office and there is a sign that says that in order to talk to the head of the department or the dean I would need to first check in with the main office. I walk over to the secretary who just happens to not be on break and I tell her my situation.

She tells me that I'll need to talk to the head of the department, but if she isn't in I could talk to her husband, so I walk all the way across the building only to find that he, too, is not there at the moment. I stop for a second. I can see where this is going and I know it is much more difficult than it should be. I have a friend who was in this situation last semester, so I take off to find him. He was in literally the last place I looked (that one's for you, Shiny!). He tells me that he just talked to the secretary and she signed him right in. This is the secretary that isn't there.

I walk back down to the office to see if she has returned yet. I walk in to see if the secretary is there while pretending to be checking to see if the head of the department is available. The woman I talked to not 30 minutes prior to this asks me what I need as if she had never seen me before. I tell her my situation. She asks me if I've talked to my advisor. I don't tell her that if I hadn't talked to my advisor I wouldn't need to exceed the 18 hours, but instead I say yes and he told me I need to talk to the head of the dept. She tells me to talk to her husband. I walk to his office once again as see that he still isn't there.

I walk back to the office and sit down outside what just happens to be my advisor's door to wait for the secretary. My advisor walks in and asks me if I got everything taken care of and I tell him no, the head of the department wasn't in. At this time the lady I talked to early walks over and asks me if I found her husband and I tell her no I haven't talked to anyone she suggesting that I talk to. She proceeds to get the schedules of the head of the department and her husband out and tells me that they aren't free now but will be in a few hours or they aren't here but will be tomorrow. She walks away and I tell my advisor that my friend told me that The secretary on lunch could take care of this and he tells me that they are trying not to do that any more.

I tell him that I'll be back tomorrow to talk to these people. What I really meant was that if I had to deal with any more bureaucracy today, I'd end up going crazy.

Day Two

I had it all planned out for the next day. I was going to get up early so I could catch the head of the department. Alas, those plans did not pan out, so after class on the next day I walk down to the head of the department's husband's office just to attempt to get ahead of the game. He wasn't in. Neither was the head of the department. The secretary that I wanted to talk to was in today, though, and I told her my situation.

She pulled out a form that we needed to fill out. She asked me a few questions, wrote some things, then we took it to my advisor. She told him that these are the new forms that allow a student to exceed the 18-hour maximum. It turns out that I didn’t need to talk to the head of the department after all. I just needed this form that no one knew existed except for one secretary to take to my advisor so that, afterward the helpful secretary could take the form to the dean who would then sign it. I then would take the form upstairs and turned it in where by the end of the workday my request would be taken care of.

This is what bureaucracy is all about to me. Even though it was rather painless after I was finally pointed in the right direction, the entire process was inefficient. I talked to 3 people before getting the right answer. After getting the right answer, the form touched at least 5 different people's hands. One person could have done this job without increasing their workload much. Yet I needed to talk to 4 different people to get the request handled. One out of three people knew about the change in policy because a bureaucracy can't immediately know about the changes that take place. It has to take place slowly and, by the time the change sets in there are more policy changes.

If you want to experience a hilarious adventure in bureaucracy like mine, but without the hassle and stress of actually doing it, look up the text adventure written by Douglas Adams called Bureaucracy.

(Oh, and as an aside, I don't think I've had one semester of completely smooth registering. I think between this blog and my other blog *nothingandjesse* I have a few stories about registering. Actually, some of my first posts deal with it.)