Why oh why is it getting impossible to get what you need for the first month of classes when everyone around you is so hooked up?? I think you all know how much of a headache it can be to get on campus and have to immediately make changes to switch out of or switch into different classes. I decided a while back that if there are changes to be made, everything must be put together very carefully so that you need to make just ONE visit to the registrar, meaning just ONE long wait in line and not weeks of schedule adjustment, dropping in and out of endless lecture halls as September rolls on by.

But year after year the nightmare gets worse, and I think it has a lot to do with students (usually the freshmen of course, but there’s no limit on idiots in the student body, right? J) getting too hooked up to their iPods. The lineups are like torture sessions, and by the time you get to your turn in line, the registrar is just about on the edge of a nervous breakdown after dealing with so many attention spans dropping down to zero because of iPods, and that’s not even counting all the blackberrys and cellphones.

Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t ever be caught without hookups when I leave the house, like not EVER. But I always turn off my units when I get close enough to the front of the line. I mean, what good is it to create delays? But unfortunately most students don’t pay any attention to that, which is funny (but not really) because they’re only extending their own stay and ruining it for all of us too.

Like last week, I had two courses to get out of and I already had the two picked. I checked it all out online first, and the two I wanted to get into were still available. So all it was going to take was a minute or two at the registrar desk, and my fall term was more or less set. Sound easy? It sure sounded that way to me at the time. When I got into the registrar area first thing in the morning the lineup was already insane, but I expected that anyway. What I didn’t expect was the people up at the front delaying their own business with constant earphone removal and replacement, answering their ringing cells, all this on top of their clueless attitude about their class schedules. But the crazy bit about the whole thing was that I could see students closer to the front grumbling and laughing and making fun of the situation, but these were the SAME people who refused to turn off THEIR iPods when it was their turn!!

So what can I say? It’s obvious to you by now that my whole morning was shot. Forget about the polite signs asking people to be “courteous” and shut off their hookups when using a campus service. Maybe they should threaten a tear-gas attack instead, if that’s what it’s going to take to make a difference between the iPod junkies and the well-organized minority. I mean, come on, wake up, you know?