Things I wish I could say

...to people who email me at work

Email 1:

Hi,
I am having trouble enrolling in electives for my course (Early Childhood Education) using the online enrolment application. There appears to be no option to enroll in any electives.
I am trying to enroll in
Subject X
Subject Y
Can you please inform me on how to enroll in these subjects as soon as possible?
Thank you in advance
[Student]


Dear [Student]

If you looked at your Enrolment Planner, you'd see there's only space for 1 elective subject in first year and 1 in second year. You have used up both your electives in your first year, so now there's no more space for electives. On top of that, you were TOLD at the end of last year that due to the curriculum change in your course, faculty staff would be removing one of your elective options and replacing it with a new core subject. PAY ATTENTION.

-Me

Email 2

I need to choose a second year elective but there is no option for 2nd year only 1st year. What do I need to do?

Dear... I have no idea what your name is (the 'from' address was just a family name)

I'm not really sure how to put this but... how am I supposed to help you if I have no idea who you are? You know what would help here? A name. That'd be great. Didn't your mother teach you how to write a letter? It generally starts with "To" or "Dear so-and-so", and finishes with "From" or "Regards" or "Sincerely, [your name] ".
An ID number would be fantastic too. And knowing what course you're doing and what subject you're trying to enrol in would be extra helpful, but that might be asking too much.
Please give me something to work with here. Help me to help you. Oh, and send the email from your university email address. We can't send enrolment information to non-university addresses.

-Me

*Later, from the same email address*

Hi Leah,
My details are as follows:
My enrollment year is X
Student No.: X
Elective Subject wishing to enroll in: X
On my study plan details for my enrollment year, I was required to choose an elective, however I am not sure whether this has changed.
Regards [Student]


Dear [Student],
What part of "send the email from your university email address" didn't you understand? I've sent a reply to your uni email address.
-Me

Email 3
Truly, the university enrolment website is awe-inspiringly bad.  Come on guys, if the much-maligned private sector can manage to make a website that isn't total rubbish, surely you can?
[Student]



Dear [Student]
You really have no idea what is required by an online enrolment application, do you? Think about this: the university has dozens and dozens and dozens of different courses. The one application needs to be able to enrol students for ALL these courses. That means that a simpler process that might work for the Bachelor of Business or Bachelor of Medicine will not work for the more complex Bachelor of Science or Bachelor of Arts.
Then, within all those courses, are HUNDREDS of subjects. These subjects cross over many courses. Those subjects have pre-requisites, co-requisites and anti-requisites. The process needs to prevent students enrolling in subjects they shouldn't be enrolling in, because it's remarkable the percentage of students who can't figure that out themselves. Sometimes it gets confused, or someone hasn't quite put the right parameters in.
Then the poor IT department are stuck working with a program and structure that has been bought off a private IT developer. They need to make that work with the university's course structures. They don't have a lot of choice in the matter.
So how about YOU write an online enrolment application that will work for a post-grad student wanting to enrol in 4 core subjects; as well as a Bachelor of Medicine student who is only required to enrol in one subject; a Bachelor of Science student who has to be able to choose their own major and group subjects (you don't even know what group subjects are, do you?) PLUS electives controlled by specific parameters; a Bachelor of Education (Secondary) student who has to be able to choose their own SAT-12 and SAT-10 teaching areas; a Bachelor of New Media Arts student who's already enrolled in a major but still needs to manually select it as a minor (before converting it to a major in their second year), as well as selecting a second minor; ... and still be simply laid out and make complete sense for every single student doing every single course?
The lay-out and operation of the enrolment site doesn't depend solely on the people who are physically creating it. It depends on the original structure and program that it's based upon, the structure of the courses (which are dependent on the staff in the faculties), the subject requirements (also dependent on faculty staff) and the actual terminology that is given to them (also by faculty staff and pre-set terminology set by the private IT developer).
Seriously, there are too many courses, too many subjects, too many requirements and too many people involved in a process like that to make it easy.
-Me