I'm Wasting My Life

[serinde]

So. Orientation. Part of this is, they march the kiddies up to the computer lab, and have them register for Fall courses. This year, it's cause for DRAMA!~ because CUNY has decided (not entirely unreasonably) that it's very Bad to have students authenticating to the course registration app by SSN, and said "instead thou shalt use the CUNY Portal", which is fine except the Orientation/New Student people had no freakin' idea how this worked. So I researched it all, and explained it to them, and me and Accounts Guy stuck around for two or three registration sessions, and we found all the tripwires, and I documented them all. And I spent a day writing and condensing down a one-page help sheet, with helpful screenshots, to give to the "peer advisors" (upperclassmen who help at registration time), and passed it unto the Orientation People. And my work here was Done, and Done Well.

I was just chatting to one of the peer advisors. Who then asked me a whole bunch of questions answered in said help sheet. Which he had never seen nor heard of, and was about to send a bunch of newbies to entirely the wrong place with the wrong problem.

WHY. DO. I. BOTHER.

Comments

[nedlnthred.livejournal.com]

Why does it surprise you that such a massive operation has so many cracks for information to fall through? Patience, grasshopper. And get your boss to do some of that networking for you.

[syringavulgaris.livejournal.com]

Considering the volumes of panicked email I got sent by these people over the past month, it really seemed like it was kind of a priority to them.

[nedlnthred.livejournal.com]

Which them? Some of them, certainly. But not necessarily the chief them, to whom you gave the info.

[syringavulgaris.livejournal.com]

There aren't that many them. The orientation advisors consist of four people, all of whom I've been regularly meeting & exchanging email with.

[nedlnthred.livejournal.com]

go fig.

[dvandom.livejournal.com]

Well, our Freshman Orientation today was certainly livened up. They had to move it to the basketball stadium because the student union was a little too close to the path of the tornado.

[briony530.livejournal.com]

I so feel your pain. Wish I had a buck for every time I'd spent time creating a form, painstakingly gathering figures, or whatever and it was ignored. Welcome to the wonderful world of administration.

[spride.livejournal.com]

This is a question I find it increasingly hard to answer. So I'm off.