Registration Pergatory

I am a BAFA stu­dent at The New School. This means that I am earn­ing two under­grad­u­ate degrees, a BA and a BFA, in five years through two dif­fer­ent school at The New School Uni­ver­sity (Par­sons and Eugene Lang). While I love this pro­gram as it allows be to be rig­or­ous in both lib­eral arts and visual arts, the bureau­cratic havoc I need to push through is mad­den­ing, espe­cially dur­ing reg­is­tra­tion. The require­ments shift a bit for BAFA stu­dents, but no one seems to agree on how exactly. I exac­er­bate the con­fu­sion by being a trans­fer stu­dent, by major­ing in a new depart­ment at Lang, and by chang­ing depart­ments at Par­sons. If there is a rule to bend, I have prob­a­bly bent it over and tied it in a knot. These knots are the foot­ing in the rope I climb to even­tu­ally make it through under­grad. While talk­ing to my his­tory adviser Paul Ross about what to take next semes­ter, he paused and asked, “So after this, you have a whole ‘nother year?” He just cack­led when I said yes. “Man, you’re going to be well educated.”

Yes­ter­day I spent a few hours between dif­fer­ent advis­ing offices.

Office A — to con­firm that I did not need to take uni­ver­sity lec­ture courses since I trans­fered to the New School as a sopho­more. Thank goodness.

Office B — to find out what the require­ments are for His­toy, as it’s a new con­cen­tra­tion, and if it is really going to be a prob­lem that I don’t have enough lower level courses. We are assum­ing it will be okay.

Office C — to fig­ure out what I need to take in Design & Tech­nol­ogy next semes­ter. No notes or paper­work had been passed onto this office though, so I was a totally anom­aly and sent elsewhere.

Office D — to find out where my files from the Pho­tog­ra­phy Depart­ment (my pre­vi­ous major at Par­sons) went. We still don’t know.

Office E — to get infor­ma­tion that should have gone to office C and try and track down Pho­tog­ra­phy Depart­ment file.

I now have a rough idea of what I should take next semes­ter to keep on track for grad­u­at­ing in May ’09.