Yesterday, I was trying to sign up for ECNU’s field trip to ether Xiamen or Guilin. Before you signed up you needed to fill out a form detailing who you are and your project proposal for the field trip to a city you might never have been before. Now we weren’t told much about this project, other than the basic requirements and the rumor that it is a way to prevent the frequent drinking that was common on last semester fieldtrip to Beijing. You also needed the full fieldtrip fee in cash (a topic I have went into several times before) and a copy of your passport. For some reason, they implemented a rule that only 40 people can go on each trip given out on a first come first serve basis, the quality of your project proposal didn’t seem to have any bearing on this. I got in line at about 12:30 and I was about the 60th person in line. It took me until about 3:00 before I got to give my paperwork to the one person checking in forms. She asked me a few questions about my project before giving me a receipt, another form to fill out, and sent me on my way. I got lucky, I heard at least four students spent more time in line than me and didn’t get a trip since both trips were filled by the time they go to the front. This second form asked for much of the same information as the first form, except the second form asked if you were vegetarian or Muslim so you could get special meals. Thankfully this form was all online so I didn’t have to get back into line to turn it in. Now, you might be wondering why we couldn’t skip all this bureaucratic mess and just have everyone who wanted to go on a trip fill out one online form that included the project proposal and let people come anytime within the next week to answer questions about their proposal and pay the fee. Even if you wanted to enforce the hard 40/40 split of students you still could since you could have your form software can likely keep track of the order people signed up in. That is a very good question, what is more perplexing is that this system was what they did last semester and it worked great. I guess it is another attempt to discourage drunkenness since anyone who wants to just drink that badly would skip the line and just drink in Shanghai. Still, even heavy drinkers might want a change of scenery for their drinking and waiting in line drunk might have made it more bearable. It is all alright though in the end. Some of my friends, classmates, and I got a trip to the city of Xiamen. Stay tuned for that when it comes.
1 Comment
Dad
3/23/2017 04:14:53 am
For all that work, Xiamen better be one fascinating city. Either that, or have a lot of bars and liquor stores
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AuthorI am a junior at Juniata College spending a year studying abroad at East China Normal University. Please feel free to join my on my journey to China and beyond. Archives
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