Can you believe it’s almost time for the fall semester already? This summer went by super fast. The Covenant students have another week and a couple days before they start up, but I’m supposed to be starting my fall semester class tomorrow night.
Yes, I said, “supposed to”. With less than 24 hours left to go before the first scheduled online session of LIS 590 TL - Theological Librarianship, I still don’t know how to actually access my class. How did this happen, you ask?
First of all, I’m taking this class through the University of Illinois although I’m enrolled in the Library Science program an the University of Missouri-Columbia. Mizzou doesn’t have any classes on theological librarianship—in fact, I don’t think any school did until the American Theological Library Association (ATLA) teamed up with U of I to do this course. Now, not being a student at U of I, I’m not familiar with whatever system they use to disseminate info about their upcoming classes. Instead, being an ATLA member, I kept my eye on their site and their listserver (Atlantis).
So, finally, when I find out some information about how to enroll in the class (which didn’t happen until a few weeks ago), I discover that, as a formality, I have to contact a particular Dean in the department in order to get the necessary blessing to enroll. Unfortunately, I didn’t pick up the phone that day thanks to busyness at work and a little bit of old fashioned procrastination.
A couple weeks ago, when I finally realized how close the start of the semester was, I got in touch with the aforementioned Dean, but the person whom she had to contact to see if there was a spot for me and who would tell me how to register was on vacation. Having received promises from the Dean that she would get the ball rolling as soon as this other person got back, I went back to being busy.
During Friday of last week, having realized that the beginning of the semester was getting extremely close and that I hadn’t heard anything back about my enrollment in the class, I fired off an email to the Dean to inquire of my status. Not much later that day, I received a CC of an email from the Dean to another University official asking about available space in the class and telling them to help get me enrolled. Yes, the Dean apparently forgot! (Is anyone really surprised?) Not much longer after that, I received an email from the other University official directing me to a website where I can actually sign up for the class, which I did promptly.
Today, I received an email from yet another University department informing me that a bunch of important sounding information such as user IDs and passwords is in the mail. That sure sounds like it would be useful to have tomorrow evening around 4 PM. Even if the postal service were fast enough to get it to my mailbox by then (as if), I’ll be at work! I’m hoping they’ll agree to fax it to me.
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