For Better or For Worse by Lynn Johnston for September 04, 2023

Bureaucracy in action.

Bureaucracy, there is no way to get rid of it or make it efficient?

Back in my day, they told us not to smile for student IDs.

Back in 1962 when I enrolled in UCal, Riverside, they organized the gym into a big processing center, with manned tables around all 4 sides and some specialty tables in the middle. We started at one end and worked our way from table to table; and by the time we left the room, we were enrolled, our majors selected, advisors assigned, and our full slate of freshman classes set up. The whole thing took about an hour—it was intense, and daunting to us former high school students away from home and making major decisions for ourselves for the first time, but it gave us a taste of what was to come.

I like the way the backpack is drawn bigger in the final panel, because I’m sure it feels heavier.

i paid to be here. i have receipts and family attorney. here’s your room key, sir.

From Lynn’s Comments: My daughter was going through these same university entrance procedures, so we had first hand experience with line-ups and all of the frustrations.

Don’t remember getting a student ID. But that was a while back. Betcha there were some parents who wondered if the person who came hone for the first break was the same one they left off what seemed a short time ago.

I don’t clearly remember being a Freshman and getting my student ID etc., but I do remember filling out schedule forms with pencil using a giant course catalog (that was about 95% right – the 5% wrong being most of the classes I was trying to sign up for).

At our school, this was all set up on rows and rows of tables at the Tennis Center. You’d walk in, grab a course catalog, find a place to sit, and start filling out your schedule. Along the outside wall of the building was one giant line of tables. At each table there was a staff member or student volunteer sitting at a computer terminal. Once you had your schedule worked out, you’d go up to one of them and they would attempt to key it in to the computer.

The “quick learners” among us realized that you had to walk up to the person at the computer terminal with at least 4 variations of your schedule because one full or canceled class would wreck your whole schedule and you’d have to go back and start over.

I was lucky enough to bump into a guy I knew from work (grocery store job) who helped me fill out my schedule and prevented me from taking 1st Semester Freshman Chemistry. Turns out that all Chemistry majors were REQUIRED to take 1st Semester Chemistry at our school, so there would have been no curve and I’d have crashed and burned. (One of the fraternities was known to stand outside at the first mid-term handing out drop-sheets. It was both a joke and a service.)

Since I never went to uni but just finished high school (Which my parents enrolled me in) I never experienced that, but it sure looks like uni on your very first day is already teaching you about what’s life like in the REAL WORLD.

Just like the DMV!

Yeah, I remember MY first day of college.

When my older daughter started her college freshman year, she had to supply a picture (with firm guidelines) so I took it. When my younger daughter did, hers was originally taken at orientation, but for some reason it didn’t come out, so it was taken again on move-in day.

it’s almost as bad as the DMV. :L

Welcome to the university freshman experience.

I was the first in line for our college ID photo. Photographer had me sit on the stool and then fiddled with the camera and lights for about a half hour. Without any warning, I hear the camera “click” and the photographer says, “next”. Throughout college, every time I had to show my ID, the person would comment on how bored I looked in the picture. I was!! Really would have been nice if the guy had informed me he was ready to take my picture!

Get used to it Michael. Patiance is part of being an adult. That’s why kids survive childhood.

Is that a new knapsack?

LOL… This looks worse than the Department of Motor Vehicles office.

Reminds me of the military…“hurry up and wait”.

Keep moving’, moving’, moving’

Though the lines are swollen

Keep them students moving’ rawhide

Through heat and lines and waiting

Time for contemplating

Wishin’ my gal was by my side

All the things I’m missin’

Good vittles, love, and kissin’

Are waiting at the end of this line

Move ’em on, head ’em up

Head ’em up, move ’em on

Move ’em on, head ’em up

Rawhide

Cut ’em out, ride ’em in

Ride ’em in, cut ’em out

Cut ’em out, ride ’em in

Rawhide

Keep movin’, movin’, movin’

Though they’re disapprovin’

Keep them students movin’, rawhide

Don’t try to understand ’em

Just photo, and line em up, and charge ’em

Soon we’ll be living high and wide

My heart’s calculatin’

A beer will be waitin’

Be waiting at the end of this diatribe

Move ’em on, head ’em up

Head ’em up, move ’em on

Move ’em on, head ’em up, rawhide

Cut ’em out, ride ’em in

Ride ’em in, ride ’em in

Cut ’em out, cut ’em out

Ride ’em in, rawhide

Rawhide (yeah, yeah, yeah)

Rawhide

My first impression on seeing this strip was saying to myself “This looks like a Navy personnel office!”

Is there a Michael Paterson on the rolls? If so does he pronounce his surname with a hard A? Pay-ter-son :)

I’m contemporary with Michael and started Uni inthe same era, and those lines were terrible. In-person registration of courses was like playing “Amazing Race” ripping back and forth across campus getting approvals from faculty offices. The touch-tone phone era that replaced it wasn’t much better (especially if you owned a rotary phone).My kids who are in now in university do all of that stuff online, and it is such an improvement! They do in minutes, on the couch with a coffee, sitting in pjs, what took me at least a full day. My only benefits were some good cardio, and I sure got to know the shortcuts aross campus.

Should have seen the first military ID picture taken not just of me but of everybody in my unit. They made us look worse than criminal booking photos…..

Before digital, had awful ID pic, I heard if you lose it they will take another pic for new ID. So I "lost " it .

Nothing to smile about is there?

Pop quizzes tomorrow. Too bad he will miss his class and the homework assignments

Intro to the rest of your life Michael

I went to community college and was part of the marching band in my first semester. The band building had some enormous lockers (big enough to hold a trombone or tuba) that band members could use for the semester. You had to show your class schedule to get one. I didn’t continue in the band after that first semester, but I did sign up for it, get my locker, then drop it every semester. It was a great place to hold my motorcycle helmet and riding gear. The rest of the campus did not have lockers at all.

I was lucky. When I went to Concordia WI, we only had 800 students, so we had short lines. It’s much larger now, I hear. They expanded the dorms and class space, and went bonkers with enlarging the athletic capacity (typical bread and butter for colleges). When I went, they were about changing the name from Concordia College WI to Concordia University WI.

We had a kind of cattle-call class-registration day that was ever so much worse! Standing in hour-long lines to sign up for classes whilst keeping an eye on the chalkboad in mortal fear of our choices getting erased! Extremely nerve-wracking.

Man, that was fast. Took twice that long to get my military ID in Basic Training.

At SIU there was a building called Woody Hall with all those offices in it. The students who worked there couldn’t help you, and the people who could help you didn’t care if you caught fire and burned to ashes where you stood. And that’s assuming that you could find the right office. The building was U-shaped, and if you turned the corner, you were suddenly on a different floor without having gone up or down any stairs. There are probably people from my 1980 era still wandering around lost in Woody Hall red tape. I had T-shirts made for my boyfriend and me that said “I survived Woody Hall” and in smaller letters “I think”. They sent my MS degree in the wrong style but I was afraid to tell them for fear I’d never get the right one so I just kept it.

I’m all in favor of bureaucracy when they’re making sure that some stranger doesn’t get my room key!

Only another hour? Big whoop.

Now we know why Elly dropped out.

Michael looks like he has been crying in the last panel.

I’ve never been to college, but, I’m kind of thinking, if I had been, I’d prefer to suffer through this rigamarole, and be sure the keys were handed to the people they actually were supposed to be.

Welcome to the real life Mr Patterson.

Ah yes…the old registration lines…

Ahhh, his introduction to the wonderful world of adulthood. :-)