Testy

If I have not mentioned it before, students register for final exams separately from courses. This has the advantage that more people can take the final exam than could attend the course that semester, which makes room for the students that failed or delayed taking the exam their first time around. It has the disadvantage that if you forget or cannot figure out how to register for the finals, you cannot get credit for the course no matter how well you know the material. This is particularly troublesome for students like me, an exchange student without access to the regular system who is also taking classes outside of her official major.

Initially, the deadline to register for final exams was the 11th of November. However, I received an email addressed to all mechanical engineering exchange students explaining that the separate web portal we had to use was not cooperating. Since 11:11 AM November 11th is the official kick off of the carnival season in Cologne, I suspect the computers decided to take the week beforehand off. As a result, I only got access to the portal Monday afternoon. Fortunately, the deadline to register was pushed back to the 17th.

The portal distinguishes between exams internal and external to the Mechanical Engineering department. To register for those offered internally, you simply select it from a drop down list. External exams are a bit trickier. You can manually type in what other exams you're taking so that the ME department has a record of it. Then, in order to actually register, you have to pester the professors to see what their respective departments require of you.

I am taking two external courses, Introduction to Literary Studies and Heat and Mass Transfer. The latter is identical to an undergraduate mechanical engineering course except that it is taught in English. It is offered as part of an English-language masters program and consequently counts as an external course. When I pestered the professors of both classes, they replied with "Write me an email." I did...and now I'm waiting...impatiently.

To make matters worse, when I tried to go back to the portal yesterday to finish entering in my classes, I received the following error.

We're sorry, but something went wrong.

I contacted the person that sent me the link situation, and he assured me that his people would look into it, but man! Can't any process be simple, direct, and bug free?