Why they are called 'universities'

Rude awakenings: Too many to list the various hours.
Fire alarms: 1 (false, yesterday).
Days to departure: 23.

Angry Alien Phone-Shouter was at it again early this morning. I took my life into my hands and tiptoed around the hallway to find out which room that horrible, freakish noise was emanating from. And I was right: it's that tiny little creature across the hall and down one door! My god, I can't believe such a ferocious din erupts from such a small body. She/it is definitely from another planet. Which, incidentally, is why I now call her Angry Alien Phone-Shouter; in case you missed my footnote the other day it's because she sounds like the titular monster in the Alien series of movies, and it is emphatically not because she is -- like me, after all -- a foreigner on these shores.

* * *

It's enough to make a grown man want to bang his head against his desk repeatedly.

This week I've had a further two e-mails from the University alerting me to Things of Great Interest and Import to Westminster University Students. The problem is, of course, these events happened a couple of days before I had received my e-mails. So there are several possibilities here:

1. Whoever is charged with publicizing these events is asleep at the switch and chronically late in sending out the messages. (These were by no means the first such tardy alerts.)
2. The publicist is actually on time, but the IT dept. person charged with sending them out on his or her behalf is way behind, and also fails to read what he or she is posting, i.e., doesn't realize that the messages are out of date.
3. The people are fine, but the system itself takes forever to propagate and get the mails out to the several thousand students on campus. However, I am a strong believer in the GIGO principle -- Garbage In, Garbage Out -- which means that a computer program is only as good as the human instruction behind it. Therefore I find this the least plausible explanation.

Of course it would be too much to ask to have a little text at the bottom of said e-mails providing human contact information so we could alert those responsible to these errors. But no. Hitting 'reply' only bounces back a message from an autoresponder saying, 'Please do not respond to this message' etc. And they wonder why they consistently get such poor turnout to their events.

Good thing I am utterly disinterested in 99% of what goes on around here anyway.

There are exceptions. Like yesterday, I received an e-mail notifying me of an event that has yet to happen -- hallelujah! -- namely, a trial for a new series of psychometric tests. Now, I've only ever been asked to write psychometric tests for a job once in my life. I had been unemployed for nearly a year and was getting desperate. So when I went for this particular interview at a division of a Well-Known Canadian Ad Agency, instead of being introduced to the interviewer I was asked me to go into a room and write a test. I promptly declined. Not being quite that desperate, I got up and walked out of the office, saying that I don't work for computers, I work for people; and if the computer wanted to interview me, fine, but it probably wouldn't be able to read my handwriting.

But the sad reality is that many companies are turning to psychometric testing. Why, I don't know. Anyone who's ever had to write something under duress -- especially when you arrive at an interview and expect to be, well interviewed -- knows that the results of these things are completely unreliable. But still, companies are doing it, probably because Other Companies Are Doing it, and Psychometric Testing Software Companies are really good at the selling their digital snake oil to other companies who hate to be left off any bandwagon. But I digress. So anyway, I figured I'd try my hand at the psychometric testing just to see the results, because I have no idea what they even purport to test, or how, or why. Besides, there's 20 pounds in it for me. So I read the attached flyer. And re-read it. And read the e-mail again, several times. But I could find absolutely no information on where and how to sign up, except a link to the main Careers page on the uni web site.

To cut a long story short, after much surfing and searching I sent an e-mail to the Careers dept., asking if they could point me to the right signup page. I received an e-mail back telling me, in long descriptive prose, where I could find the link. Sort of. (The e-mail never actually included any of the words I should have been looking for in the first place.)

So I wrote back and said, "Thank you for the information. It may help recruitment in future if you were to SIMPLY COPY AND PASTE THE DIRECT LINK TO THE APPROPRIATE ESSENTIAL INFORMATION IN ANY E-MAILS AND ANY OTHER MARKETING MATERIALS YOU SEND."

I used to wonder why they call them 'universities'. I now know it's because they hire the stupidest fucking idiots in the entire universe to run them.

* * *

Speaking of universal morons, let us pause to marvel at the astounding waste of skin and oxygen that is Sonny, the bloated sac of protoplasm that lives across the hall.

As I type this I am once again listening to his mobile phone cum alarm clock ringing incessantly. At least once a week on average, since the beginning of the school year, he has left his room and 'forgotten' his mobile phone, which he has set to go off at 10-minute intervals. When it does, it rings for a full minute, then stops for another 10.

You can only imagine how annoying this is when one is trying to concentrate on a paper, or sleep.

Good thing his battery lasts only 8-10 hours.

And before you say anything, YES, we have ALL complained about this repeatedly -- to him, and to halls management. The former only apologizes (sometimes) and promises to never do it again, and the latter never does anything, period.