Feed me?

One thing I wasn’t prepared for was having to relearn the ropes. The administration at SIPA announced to all wide-eyed first years at orientation, there is red tape here. You’re on your own. Figure it out and good luck with it. (In other words, don’t bother us.) So, last year, I did just that. Ran around figuring out how to register for classes, where to go for this and that, how to utilize a loophole to print all my readings for free and overall realizing, as promised, how incredibly inefficient SIPA is.

And I have to do it all over again. As early as last Friday, I tried to register and activate my LSE account, but student services absolutely would not let me. I tried again on Tuesday, since I need an active LSE account in order to access information about courses (which start on Monday), sign up for career events (which started today), get student discounts on transportation, open a bank account, and just generally go about life.

We can’t do that here, they said, not yet. Come back on Thursday.

So I went back today. And you know those times when you have three questions, and to get answers you have to go to three different departments in three different buildings, and each department then redirects you to another department in another building? That’s always fun.

Thus, I got a small jolt back to reality and stress today. I think my experience was particularly disarrayed because I’m a dual-degree student, so I’m technically a continuing student, though I’m actually still new to things. Overall, I’m excited to start my studies again now that I’m at the end of a nearly five-month vacation.

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After today’s wild goose chase, I took a leisurely stroll with a kindred-spirit friend T, whom I was lucky enough to end up sitting beside at church on my first Sunday here. We met some inquisitive geese in St. James Park, who lost interest when they realized we had no crumbs for them.

More beautiful blue skies in this lovely town. It seemed like a Saturday in the park, because the unseasonably warm weather (it’s 80 degrees here) drew so many people out on the lawns after work. Doesn’t it look like Disneyland in the distance?

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