Like a Boss, Day 2

Day 2, bracing my team for the worst: A large barrage of students despite the efforts of reducing the volume through means of online methods. Yet the online method was pretty much ignored or not understood by most of the students. In fact, one of my members asked about it and out of the expected 700 students, only around a hundred paid attention to the new system. Judging from the schedule presented for the whole academic year, it seems that the new system would still persist. For the undergrad, things will be a bit lighter. In fact, lighter than we expected. A constant arrival of students with gap of around 5-30 minutes each was observed. Good for them…

For grad, there’s the usual uneven number of arrivals. Despite this, I got to work on some celebrities’ registration. The first was a batchmate and orgmate. Second was my Philo 101 and 102 prof who, when I met him at the door, directly gave me his ID when he saw me. Third and last was another batchmate and a fellow scientian. But I don’t think meeting me there doesn’t mean so much to her since she’s high rolling with the topmost section in our batch. Only a handful of batchmates from her section are close to me, but not as close as everyone else and you know what I mean. x| Anyway, back to grad, it was a busy run. So busy that we don’t have much time even to interact with accounting assistants. We positioned ourselves in our respective places and said “rock and roll”. Everything went on smoothly, fortunately, and no major errors were seen. I also checked my checkers down and it seems that they handled the job pretty well. Although it was sad to see that they are the only ones working there as checkers together with the registrar’s office’ reps when it was expected or planned that there would be 4 from RO, 3 from us and 3 from the committee. At that particular moment, I had the distinct suspicion of concentrating the committee’s force on the undergrad when it was not that hectic compared to us. In addition, I felt as if they’re running or avoiding this particular area of the battlefield. But immediately I cleared up my mind and just went on concentrating on the work. Before ranting again, hoping that I will be able to forget it after writing this next set of words, I would like to say few things:

My grad assessors made it to the finish line, won the battle! Despite the sudden change of situation, we were able to cope with the stress, even the new members handled it pretty well. It was a record break for the new members as they were slammed into this job and they made it with nothing to pull them down. I wanted to congratulate them for doing a magnificent job.

I also want to congratulate one of my assessors, as she started under my team but as an accounting assistant so she haven’t grasped the grad assessment terror. But she managed everything pretty well. In fact, when a student finished his assessment, she was not able to get his scholarship documents. I only noticed later and I chased the student to get his papers. Then when I turned around, I was shocked to see her in front of me saying sorry for forgetting to get the papers. I was so funny and cute that I just told her that it is fine. xD It’s important for people to recognize failures or simple the things that they forget. That’s why when my assessors immediately knew that they did something wrong and then corrected it, I won’t give them punishments for that as long as they knew their wrongs and correct it. That’s enough for me.

For the two made the mistake that crippled the registration for undergrad, I don’t think it’s that of a big punishment. I always make sure that my team is intact. Since the problem was managed, I don’t think it’s a big deal punishing you guys heavily. I went through the same situation and was spared and retained in the team so why would I be harsh. It is expected that the committee would be angry about it since they are the ones handling such things but for me, they shouldn’t be. When you enter a particular job or task, you should be fit for that task, meaning be as chill as you are in a vacation and expect and encounter nearly not tolerable problems. You don’t go to a job wherein you avoid certain situations. You don’t avoid those, you solve them. I equip my assessors with the mindset to always solve things with everything they can because, for me, that is all we really do. Solve problems. Not like we go there, do our job, preventing something bad to happen. To me, expect it to happen, not prevent it to happen. And when you expect it to happen, ready yourself to solve it with any means you have around.

For the committee, I think it’s also a big success. For one, it was good to see them in a healthy number compared before and it seems that everything was handled pretty well, including that POS problem and I think everyone owes it to your overall head. If she hadn’t been that strict and her attention to detail isn’t that big, this would not be possible. She may be like that but she aims for one thing, for sure, and that is service quality. Without her, this committee may have a chance of getting extinct.

I just want to rant about that problem, which I think that the overall cause of this havoc is the department itself. If only the department had closed the whole thing if they don’t want any student to get in, this would not happen. Also, they would not get into the trouble of announcing such action throughout the whole school. It’s a common sense that announcements such as that can have holes in it and it can be ignored or forgotten. The delay in relaying such announcement is also part of the whole problem. You cannot blame the committee for letting the two students enlist on the remaining slots, you cannot blame my team because of this delays and lack of complete announcements so really the one to blame is the department. It shows how picky the department and persistent on  preferences that would give advantages to their own intent. I hate it, I so hate it.

Overall, the team did well. I hope this will persist next time and it was a very good experience. What a starter on my second term.

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