Registration

I registered for my final year of university last friday. I was a bit excited, but also a bit afraid. The night before (actually around 01.00 the morning) I had Beth Orton’s ‘Daybreak’ stuck in my head and it was making me a little emotional. I don’t know why, it is only third year. And I keep saying that my friends are all in the same year, they will be there with me. But that makes me think, is it more than just leaving university that is making me afraid? It could be that I now have to grow up, start a life on my own and no more time to ‘lay on [my] back on the grass/silently watching the rain clouds’ as Beth Orton’s lyrics go. I think it’s also because I am putting so much pressure on myself to get really good grades for all my subjects. It was an extremely long holiday, so maybe it is also that that is making me worry – will I be fit to study as much as is needed (and more).

As my friend and I drove in Stellenbosch, close to my campus, our other friend gave a missed call on my cell phone (my friend knew that is was that specific friend because she always either gives a missed call or sends a ‘please call me’ – and it was her) probably to let us know that she is there already (at the parking she said she was going to be at). I actually wanted to park at student parking, but I decided to take a turn past the shops’ parking where my friend said she was going to park at (and where she wanted me to park as well) and then we saw her walking along the shops – she waited for us there while I parked the car. It was great seeing her again, I only saw her at her work in Tyger Valley Shopping Centre and I called her yesterday to invite her to ‘Vensters’ (see previous post), she had to work so she couldn’t come along. Also, I was happy she was there so that I’d have a friend to stand with me in the registration line. We got past the formalities of greeting and headed straight for the registration line. On the way we met another of our dear friends (who I was so happy to see, because she actually graduated and although I saw her during the holidays she wasn’t sure if she was going to return to Stellenbosch – but she’s back for another year). We had to say goodbye to my best friend as she only registered at 9.00 (this was at 07.20) and we proceeded to the lines, which already had about 20-30 students in it. Luckily we came a little early (our official registration time was 08.00) and lucky for us that we were in the first group for registration (my friend who registered at 9.00 took over 2 hours to get done with registration; we only took about 30 mins, from 08.00). In the line I realized that I forgot my student card at home, luckily that wouldn’t affect the registration process; I just couldn’t get my card activated – to get into certain areas. There are people that help you choose your subjects and explain certain things that are unclear regarding subject choices. I was the lucky one to be the “guinea pig” for somebody who has never done this before, the woman standing there pointing to a free person told me, ‘Jy kan die ‘guinea pig wees’ (You can be the guinea pig). So I had to sit there while this woman was explaining to another woman how to do certain things. I was sitting there thinking, I could have showed her that. The woman teaching told the other woman that ‘H’ stands for ‘Hoofvak’ (main subject) but the woman wrote ‘Hoë vak’ (High Subject) on her notes, I just thought it was funny, sitting there bored. After the woman teaching her left, it took longer for her to get my subjects ticked with ‘H’ or ‘A’ (additional subject): two of my friends left from their subject choices before I was done. I mean, I could’ve just told her what to do, but I rather let her do everything (slowly) so she could learn and then maybe the next person would get through the process much quicker. Every year something strange happens to me at subject choices. In my first year I couldn’t decide if the person helping me was a man or woman – she turned out to be my female philosophy lecturer (and she was in one of our South African magazines), you can’t really blame me because she did look like a boy and she didn’t act like a woman either. She was cool though. Last year, my second year, there wasn’t really anything strange, just that the woman who helped was in the Linguistics department and she told me as I left, “See you in linguistics” (which happened once only). But my friend kept saying, ‘there’s your friend’ whenever the woman passed in the passage or something. Anyway, so I went to get myself a new student card but when I got to the room the woman told me she needed my old student card, which was at home. Then she said I should bring my card later to be activated otherwise I’d have to pay a R50 (for a new card) and I told her it would be fine, but she just looked at me and I said it was fine I’ll bring my card another day. Then I went to get my car a parking disc (which went up another R40 from my first year to R120, it was R80 last year and R40 the year before that), but I couldn’t remember my car’s number plate (I was really hopeless that day). So I decided to get my friend outside and we went for a drink at one of the restaurants in Stellenbosch. I had an iced tea. Then we decided to go to ‘Humarga’ (our computer lab) to get some more information on our classes and stuff like that. When we got into our Arts building we saw a flatscreen TV on the wall – which was new, and it was off, and then in Humarga all the old computers were replaced by new flatscreen computers. There we also found another of our Varsity friends. It was great seeing all the people from our classes, even people I never spoke to greeted me and others came to speak to me. I got two of my Chinese classmates. They were very clever in class, they knew I was very good in Chinese and whenever we were split into groups they begged to be in my group – which was usually the winning group. I’m not bragging, I’m just telling the truth. But there is this one crazy girl in our Chinese class, who’s really competitive. One of my classmates asked me if I won the ‘Character Championships’ last year, I said no, that crazy girl did, and they knew who I was talking about, one of them called her a freaky chick. She’s nice but can be too much sometimes, very intense. So on Monday I’ll be seeing these people more often. I really can’t wait to begin university.