Dumped into the Middle of It

Well! Today's foray into the world of registrar-dom was quite interesting! It turns out that the previous registrar had left basically without notice (and with little or no thought for those who would have to leap into the gap) and the person filling in before me seems to have primarily spent her time making big stacks of papers and files without telling anyone (let alone the next temp) what they were. Now add in the fact that classes begin on Friday, and you begin to get a sense of what my first encounters with this place were like!

This would have been daunting enough for an experienced registrar, let alone someone like me who's only encountered the office from the other side of the desk. However, after about an hour of orienting myself with the computer, the abbreviations and the filing system, I was feeling much more comfortable with the mechanics of the job. Much, much of it involves inputting or editing or viewing data entered in a somewhat cumbersome menu-driven PC-based program; I've basically figured out the program now -- no big deal. On the other hand, I'm still terribly in the dark as to things like timeframes for various activities, the class schedules, who gets the green form when, etc. In other words, if I had to do the job all by myself as isolated tasks, I'd be golden; it's having to integrate my own activities with those of everyone else that have been insanely complicated.

And practically no one, beyond the student workers (who didn't know much themselves), appreciated this. Half of the people kept assuming that I was too new to understand the system and thus tended to swoop in on me to explain things I'd figured out hours ago or to whisk off a project I was in the middle of completing. The other half assumed that I was a registrar sprung full-blown from the head of Athena or something and kept asking me complicated questions about files or credits or where Student Joe Blow's file had gotten to, etc.

What I wouldn't have given for a simple training manual!

The closest I got was three typed pages of semi-random highly abbreviated codes and notes the previous registrar had written to herself. So I was able to learn that transcripts require two stamps to mail, but not where the special paper was or who had to sign off on the forms first, or what to do when the transcripts were so old they'd been shipped out to a special service (for which, of course, no one had the phone number). Talk about learning on the fly!

(It was with this experience behind me that I read Dorothea's post on credentialing (which links to others on the same topic) today -- it seemed terribly apropos.)

In other news, I've signed the lease for my new apartment -- an airy second-story place with an "ocean" view (over roofs, if you crane your neck) only 6 blocks from a yoga studio and abutting a park! The landlady is cat-friendly and a former history major to boot, if you can believe it. Paying the equivalent of a month's pay in rent, deposit, etc. was more than a little scary, though!

(Can I do a happy-happy joy-joy dance now without jinxing myself?)