Survival 101 - Or, How to Survive Course Registration with only Flesh Wounds

by Wedge[d] Antilles

It’s that time of the year again when millions of people cram into halls the size of basement closets, clutching grossly crumpled triplicate forms, shouting their lungs out and crashing into and trying to flatten just about anyone and everyone in the immediate vicinity, and generally being violent in the worst possible way.

That’s right. It’s time to register for courses again.

If you’re new to university life, course registration is all about lining up for ridiculously long periods of time with other sweaty, sticky bodies pressed into your back, your arms, your face, and any other part of your anatomy exposed for abuse in a futile attempt to get a place for your course of choice. Overwhelming in proportions, this arduous task burns more calories per minute than, say, an hour-long ski-trip, and is twice as dangerous as jumping off a Concorde cruising at 20,000 feet without a parachute. Which is why I, being a registration veteran (3 years), have taken the liberty to write this survival manual for your benefit. Because you’re definitely going to need it if you intend to live long enough to graduate.

TYPES OF COURSES

If you’re in, say, the medical faculty, you have nothing to worry about. (Apparently the administrators at the faculty of medicine are under the impression that medical students can't fight their way out of a paper bag without help) Just do what your seniors are doing. If, however, you’re unfortunate enough to be doing Arts or Science, then you will be faced with three different course groups:

1. Core subjects
2. Electives (within the faculty)
3. Electives (outside the faculty)

CORE SUBJECTS

You should have absolutely no problem registering for any of these, the reason being that no fool besides you is going to want to take some peculiar course called Thermodynamic Profile of Sulfurous Exudates in Abnormal Deep Sea Thermal Vents, which is created solely by lecturers having a sadistic sense of humour for the purpose of bamboozling students. You, however, are required to sign up for them because it is dictated in your faculty guide book (the requirements differ depending on your major), and if you should make the mistake of not signing up for it, then God help you because they’re probably going to feed your liver to a pack of ravenous hyenas.

ELECTIVES (WITHIN THE FACULTY)

These are subjects you don’t have to take if you don’t want to, and which you definitely don’t want to take because they are taught either by blundering idiots who make notorious factual errors every 2 seconds or so and laugh at their own sick jokes, or by the descendants of Attila the Hun, who glare at you with steely eyes every time you walk in through the door and give everybody, even Einstein’s equivalent, marks that are so low that they are permanently embedded in the earth’s mantel, and can only be extricated by mad archaeologists who have forgotten how far they’ve dug, and are continuing just for the heck of it. Unfortunately, in most cases you will have to sign up for these anyway because your core subjects aren’t going to give you enough credits to graduate. There might be a little bit of competition because there are approximately 40,000 students who are facing the same predicament as you, but if you know how to elbow people in the gut and grab the registration list and not let go, then you should have no problems whatsoever. All you have to do is fill the name of the course or subject in your registration form, sneak to your department counter and get the lecturer to sign it, and then slink off before anyone notices what kind of rot you have signed up for.

ELECTIVE COURSES (OUTSIDE THE FACULTY)

First of all, find out if the course registration for this is centralized or decentralized.

1. DECENTRALIZED REGISTRATION

This means that you register for the course at the faculty at which it is offered. If your elective course registration is decentralized, you are a very, very lucky sod indeed. Just make sure you know where exactly you are supposed to go to register for the subjects of your choice – many people conveniently neglect this because they think nothing can be simpler than locating a single virus in a galactic haystack. They have never been heard of again. This is mostly because the people who build universities tend to stick important rooms such as offices in totally obscure places, such as the basement, and you will never ever find it, even if you were to ask the academic staff, whose primary role is to misguide you anyway. It may also be because some scientists are breeding unusually vicious mutant hamsters in the basement.

2. CENTRALIZED REGISTRATION

You poor bastard. You are going to a part of Hell that even the devil would hesitate to enter.

What’s the big deal, you say. After all, this is university. Perhaps you think that all the students who come to study here are nice, well-educated, well-mannered, well-behaved, high-standard, highly moral urban young adults who will gladly form neat lines in registering for the courses they want, regardless of the fact that there are 4.4 billion other people who want to take exactly the same course.

Perhaps you are stupid.

What really happened two days ago when I went to register was this: picture a two-metre wide door. Then picture a crowd the size of the entire population of India outside the door in a screaming, sweating tangled swarm-like mass. Most of the girls, who are probably total airheads, find it totally amusing to scream and shriek every 10 seconds (if only this would shatter the windows and we could clamber in, but nooooo it doesn’t happen). The door only opens once in about 15 minutes, and only a certain number of people are allowed in at a time. And all of these people want to get through the door at the same time. Those on the flanks eagerly press themselves into the crowd in an attempt to get closer to the door. In the middle, those at the back, impatient with having to waste more than 2 seconds of their lives waiting, try to shove their way forward, whilst those in front, who obviously cannot walk through closed doors, try to take steps backwards. It’s all very well if you’re standing at the sides, in front or at the back. What happens, however, if you are standing right in the middle of the mob?

Don’t waste your time trying to imagine it. I’ll tell you: you get squashed like a bug on a windshield.

Perhaps you are the sort of packer who will try to cram as many articles of clothing into your suitcase, stamp on them and then try to cram more in even though it is obvious that your suitcase is about to fall apart at the seams. Perhaps you should be a little more considerate towards your clothing in the future. Because that is exactly what it’s like standing in the middle of the madhouse. Because of the force applied equally from the sides, the front and the back, everyone is smooshed against each other, and the last few free molecules of air have long since fled in fear. It’s just as well that the bonds holding the molecules that constitute us are so strong; otherwise, we’d all be falling through one another, and all there’d be left is a disordered heap of thoroughly confused atoms. If you don’t believe me, try it for yourself. Every time the door opens, the mass of people becomes even more dense and compacted that if it were allowed to continue, eventually the mass would collapse and form a black hole in the middle of the foyer, which would then swallow up the entire building and perhaps even the university. Which might be a good idea, come to think of it.

It got so bad at one point that my friends and I found ourselves wishing we were armed with vials of say, fatal strains of some incredibly fast acting airborne bacteria to which we are already immune. Or better yet, that we had alien friends who would pull out amazingly sophisticated Zap guns and totally vaporize everybody else in sight.

Of course, we eventually managed to escape with only bruises and a few layers of skin lost (or else I wouldn’t be writing this, would I?), but that’s not the point. What is the point is this: it would be easier for you to go back in time and fight in the 1841 Civil War than to get this registration thing done.

Ghastly, isn’t it? I hope that terrifying scenario has caught your attention because it’s now time for you to look sharp and take some notes. That’s if you want to get through this unscathed, of course.

HOW TO SURVIVE REGISTRATION

Here are some pointers. Not all there is to this brutal game of survival, but the barest minimum you must remember if you treasure your pathetic, meaningless existence.

• Start training months in advance. I would recommend martial arts, since it gives you a total body workout, but if you can’t, then make sure you work those arm and leg muscles in the gym or something. Go ahead and laugh, but you'll be sorry when you're out there getting squashed to chum.
• Go to the registration hall early. Stay there overnight if you have to. Because once morning comes, the place is going to be absolutely swarmed with what seems like barbarous morons from Mars, and you can kiss your chances goodbye.
• Make sure you come prepared. Do not, and I repeat, do not leave anything important behind (eg. Your ‘O’ or ‘A’ level certificates and your registration form), or you’ll be wishing you could kick yourself in the ass (I won’t stop you, however). If you need a pen, make sure you stash it someplace safe such as your satchel or hip pockets. Do not, under any circumstances, put it in your pocket, or worse yet, hold on to it. Many people have died horrible deaths when the sharp ends of their stationery penetrated their guts, lungs, head, jugular vein or more sensitive parts of the body. Just kidding, but you know what I’m driving at. Also make sure that whatever you’re wearing is made out of material strong enough not to get torn to shreds in the stampede, but at the same time absorbent enough to soak up the massive amounts of sweat you’ll perspire.
• Buy an oxygen tank. If you’re too miserly to get one, at least be sure you can hold your breath for extremely long periods of time. You’ll be going diving – head first into a swamp of vile, disgusting, bad-mannered people with excruciatingly severe body odour who will not willingly share a single molecule of air with you, not that you’d want to either.
• Make sure you’re wearing good shoes. You can be stubborn about it and wear high heels or sandals if you like, but should anything horrible happen to you (and it definitely well), I refuse to take responsibility. If you’re wearing white tennis shoes, just remember that you may never get those awful black stains out after all of this is over. Chunky basketball sneakers and Doc Martens are the best because they keep you anchored to the ground, and because it’ll hurt like hell for the poor sod whose feet you’re treading on.
• Stay rooted to the ground, whatever you do. Do not attempt to sit down, or to relieve the soreness of one foot by standing on the other like some dysfunctional flamingo. That’s the best way to lose your balance. And let me tell you, when that crowd starts shoving, you’re going to have more trouble keeping your balance than an elephant on a wire. The best way of making sure you don’t fall is by making sure someone else falls. If there’s nowhere to plant your feet, then tread on other people’s feet. Aha! And you thought basketball sneakers and Doc Martens were unnecessary! Ballet lessons might help.
• Learn to shove back. This is an important skill you must master before attempting to register for these elective courses, unless, of course, you like being squished like an insect.
• Keep your hands to yourself. If you’re not holding anything, keep them at your sides. If you’re clutching a folder of some sort, make sure the folder is in front of you, and that your elbows are facing outwards (it does not matter if they are viciously digging into somebody else’s gut). Under no circumstances at all should you attempt to extend your arms. It is the best way I can think of to get your arms broken to tiny bits.
• Leave your ethics at home. Which would you prefer: getting the elective course of your choice or getting stamped to a bloody pulp the approximate shape of an amoeba? Exactly.
• Do not expect the management and administration people who cooked up this whole mess to be of any help whatsoever. Their only role in this is to make your life miserable as sin. Perhaps you could try dragging them out of their luxurious air-conditioned offices and bung them in the middle of the chaos, just in the name of vengeance.
• Remember to buy life insurance. At the very least, you’ll be ending up with a couple of slipped discs. Worst case scenario – just buy the damn insurance, will you.

If you remember all of the above, and remember to execute all of it, you should eventually emerge from the registration hall with only minor cuts and bruises – although you might be old enough to have grandchildren by then. You might want to take extra precautions by showing up in, say, a suit of armour, or a rose bush. The initiative is yours to take – it’s your life after all. So go ahead, start preparing yourself now for the mindless torture that awaits you in the very near future. All the best of luck, and may whichever god or deity you pray to give you enough courage to look Doom in the eye (if you’re an atheist, hard luck).

Oh, and maybe it would also be a good idea to befriend a couple of aliens who possess Zap guns.

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Note: A little something I wrote as leader (General Antilles!) of the Society for the Appreciation of E. coli, for my juniors.