schedules? efficiency? organization?

For the most part, I feel like I have been pretty okay with the lack of schedules around here. However, almost everything to do with classes has made me extremely aware of how much I like schedules, efficiency, and organization. Many days, in my mind, have been wasted because of the lack of efficiency that I am accustomed to. In order to figure out which classes are being offered each semester, students have to go to each department building to look at the timetables. Some of the timetables were up two weeks ago, while others were not posted until almost a week later. Some of the timetables are posted on the outside of the building, but others are posted on the inside. So, if you’re like me, and you walk to the History department to see the timetable only to find out that the timetable is actually inside the locked building, then you just trekked fifteen minutes across campus for nothing and are very annoyed.

Going to classes during the first week was also quite a different experience. The first class I went to was a course about conflict in Africa. I walked over early with some international students, getting to class about twenty minutes before it started, since I had been told to get to classes early in order to ensure that I would have a seat. I had also been told that almost all Ghanaians and most professors don’t come to classes during the first week, but if you do go to class, you must wait forty-five minutes for the professor to show up, and if they don’t, then you can leave. So, I sat with dozens of white people and less than a handful of Ghanaians waiting for our professor. Almost forty-five minutes after the class was supposed to start, one of the people who had been sitting in one of the desks stood up, announced that he was the professor, welcomed us to the class, and said that since many students didn’t come, we would just start next week. What?! I expected most Ghanaians not to come to class, but why would the professor sit among the students for all of that time?

Many instances like this have happened, and more than once I really wanted to scream. Like, for instance, when I went to a department office to try and get my syllabus. I walked in, watched the worker dance around in her chair to blasting music for about five minutes, and when I realized that she probably wasn’t going to either 1. Look up and see me or 2. If she had seen me, ask me if I needed help, I walked over and tapped her on the shoulder in order to ask my question. Or when I showed up to a different department office to register for a class, only to find the office locked even though the lunch break was supposed to end more than a half hour before. Or, when I went to yet another department to try and register for a class, ended up walking around for 15 minutes because the office I was supposed to go to is not labeled, finally find the office, and then am told that the professor who usually helps register students is teaching and won’t be back for another four hours. Or when I walked twenty minutes to a department to pay for my photocopies of class readings – ones that were supposed to be ready five days before – and am told that they probably will be ready sometime next week. Or when I actually do receive photocopies of two whole books for my English class…and then realize that neither of those books were listed on the syllabus. I wondered whether I was given the wrong copies or the wrong syllabus…and then realized it was pointless to try and figure it out since I most likely would not get the answer until the next time I go to the class.

Thoughts that have been running through my head include: Why wouldn’t you post the hours that people can register for classes? Why would you not label the office with a sign? Why wouldn’t you have each department put up their timetables on the same day? Why can’t the whole system just be online? Why would professors not show up to the first week of classes? Why does everything take so long? Why is everyone always telling me things that contradict each other?

My culture tells me to see efficiency as the chief aim and adherence to a strict schedule as a major life goal. I am learning, though, that these things are not of utmost important to this culture…and maybe they aren’t quite as important as I have always made them out to be.