UCT

UCT requires new students to pre-register. Completing this says that tuition has been paid. For international students it also asks questions about our passports, study visas and our medical insurance. This process for some took 3 hours of waiting in line (or a queue as they call it)! Once I heard that, a few of us decided to leave an hour early, so it only ended up taking us about a half hour – we got very lucky! First you had to fill out a bunch of forms. Once they were filled out, a woman had to check them to make sure things were completed correctly and signed correctly. From there you entered a room where there were two women on computers (that looked like they were from the 1990s) who checked that tuition had been paid. Then you had to wait again for two other people in a different room on computers who entered all of your information into the computer system for registration, which happens in a few days. I was pretty surprised how “old” this system seemed because the rest of campus is so nice. However, internet in South Africa is rarely free. At home, we have to pay per megabyte that we use! I heard one company monopolized the internet for a long time and that is why it was so expensive.

UCT registration also seemed to be very old school. When you first arrived you had to wait inline by your last name. There we would give our preregistration forms and they gave us a form and student ID number. Then we sat in another really long line where we had to fill out the form with a bunch of our personal information and the classes we wanted to take. Next there were about 10 people all sitting at desks where you would take your form and they would check everything off. They were primarily making sure that all of the students were eligible to sign up for the classes that they wanted. So, they have to find your name on a long list to see what classes we were preapproved for. If we were not preapproved for a certain class, we had to (beforehand) go to the department head with our transcript and have them sign off on a piece of paper which showed we were allowed to enroll in the class. After the person checked off the classes you wanted to take, we had to wait in another line to have all of our information put on the computers. People were sitting at computers waiting to enter our class information into the system. It was actually pretty interesting to see that UCT uses the same registration system as CU… Except UCT has all of those kind of annoying extra steps beforehand. After this, there was another 3 hour line to wait and get student ID cards. I didn’t end up waiting to get my card, and tried 4 other times to get it and finally on the 4^th time I was able to pick it up. Then you have to wait in ANOTHER line to have it activated. Wow, so much waiting in lines..

Anyway, I am enrolled in Health Psychology, Ancient Mythology and Genocide: African Experiences. The psych class seems really cool, it is a large lecture and my teacher is really nice and fun. She is really into South African music and the idea of music as therapeutic, so we get to listen to a different SA song/ band once a week… I am really excited about that since I love music. The mythology class seems pretty boring and the teacher seems pretty strict. I am only taking it to fulfill the core requirement upper division literature and the arts back at CU. Then Genocide: African Experiences is pretty much all American students, so that kind of stinks. But I think the class will be really interesting as it takes a deeper look into African Genocide. One thing my teacher brought up yesterday that I thought was really interesting was that the worst genocides (by worst I mean killing the most people) that have taken place have been in Russia, parts of Europe and Asia – not Africa.

**I will put up pictures of UCT soon! My digital camera broke and I just got a memory card for my new one. The campus here is gorgeous.. Although it is on a hill (larger than Boulders) so it is literally a workout walking to class everyday. It is also kind of embarrassing because we get sooo sweaty walking to class. Also, everyone looks nice here for class. So that kind of stinks. I have kind of a hard time trying to pick out what I’m going to wear since I would be obviously American if I wear gym shorts and a tshirt. I wonder how long me dressing up for classes will last.. And when I say dressing up for classes I mean nice khaki shorts with a plain shirt and birkenstocks, haha. Lots of girls wear summer dresses with nice flats or sometimes heels.