Observations of Enrolment
by Nick Marland

[portions of which appeared as a comedic sidebar to a story in Passing Show Volume 31, Issue 2, 2002]

• After waiting in the same line for 3 hours, people will forgive you for curling in the foetal position on the ground.
• Remember, in the queue for a consultation with the online system data-entry clerk, no-one can hear you scream. Except the person next to you whose ear you’re screaming directly into.
• Full credit to the student body for not treading on the bodies of any of the brave nine souls who didn’t make it through enrolment.
• Such treacherous conditions brought about what we used to refer to in the army* as ‘battle conditions’: if you were hungry, and an exchange student with little command of English had a chocolate bar, you were obligated to fight him/her to the death for it.
• No, you CAN’T push ahead of me in line!
• A thankyou to the University for providing distractions during the long wait, including tea, coffee, kung-fu exhibitions and a troupe of dancing elephants fluent in Olde English.
• As heartbreaking as it may seem, no-one in the line appreciates your extended ‘10,000 Green Bottles’ vocal rendition.
• On the positive side, sitting on a chair for long periods whilst in line gives you ample time to plot your revenge vandalism attacks on campus buildings.**
• The long hold-ups and frequent system crashes made a lot of sense when you finally got to the end of the line and realised that the ‘computers’ were hand-made from wood, covered in dust and required frequent winding of a large crank lever to keep them running.
• If, after waiting five hours, you think you saw the first Chancellor of the modern German Empire, Otto von Bismarck, it was probably a hallucination.
• You’ve just gotten your timetable finalised, and you’re finished! NO YOU’RE NOT. Now it’s down to the Atrium for more forms and volunteers who are actually really nice – it’s such a shame that you’re so rude and surly to them after waiting in one line for 6 hours, losing your wallet and running into the tutor whom you unfortunately called a “dickhead” last year.
• Enrolment wouldn’t be enrolment without something to bitch about... and hey, at least the student diaries look pretty this year.

NOTES: * - Writer was never in the army. ** - This view is not endorsed by Passing Show, the editors or even the writer – he’s a little confused as to where that outburst came from, too.

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