I love uni

This week at uni:

• I have spent over an hour just trying to find out when semester starts. There is, buried somewhere so deep I can't even remember where, one document that has the relevant dates in clear format. However, nothing on the front page. The "semester dates" link, a few layers down, goes nowhere (although in early February it was still linking to the 2008 dates). From previous experience, however, that may have been a blessing since what should have been there was a table with approximtely 639 dates, none of which actually says when lectures start and finish. The answer was that it started last week. Bugger.
• The one part of the course materials that was actually up and running referred to 2008 in at least 40% of the documents, as well as having the old course number (further confusing me about whether or not semester had actually started). The whole thing looked like it was under construction, not in full swing.
• I have attended the first prac (statistics), to be lectured about how terribly important it is to have extensive experience with data sets by a wise and aged woman who finished her honours year last year. (For the statistically inclined, she suggested that the fact that the data for IQ didn't even approach normal was not a big deal, we could just apply a transformation to make it look normal.)
• I have read some of the most sarcastic, smug message board entries from a lecturer that I could ever have imagined. This man clearly feels that all students are intensely privileged to be attending this course, and if any of them should have anything else happening in their lives, he doesn't give a shit.
• The first, (repeatedly) proclaimed non-compulsory, lecture was not, as advertised, available online. In addition, there were handouts distributed. The lecturer has steadfastly refused to specify exactly where they can be found online. They are there, but not anywhere obvious.
  
• I took 2 small children to buy textbooks at the Co-op on campus. There were all kinds of stupid involved, but the overwhelming message is anyone who is not able bodied need not bother. The pram just barely fit in the cattle run directing punters to the register. The other guy's wheelchair didn't. I presume he didn't need any course notes, because they were down a precipitous set of stairs. Since there was no way I could get back up the stairs, I headed out the only other way - a back alley through a car park mostly filled with a truck. It's a welcoming campus.
  

I love Macquarie University.