I am a mouse, and education is my cheese.

Today, after two weeks here, I met a real, live classicist! Since Monday when I registered and began to try to figure out what courses are being offered, when they are supposedly to be held, and whether the professors assigned to teach them actually exist outside of cyberspace, it has seemed increasingly unlikely that such an event would actually take place. As much as it pains me to say so, and as little as I ever expected to have to make this admission, here it is: KU's bureaucracy is a paragon of efficiency and transparency when compared to the British university system.

At KU, although it may take you twenty visits to various offices all over campus and cost you hundreds of dollars to change your schedule after you have enrolled, at least you know what classes are being offered and when and where they will meet several months before the new semester begins. And as unpleasant as it is to spend one's time in, say, Wescoe Hall, no one has ever physically been prevented from exiting the building if it is his or her will to do so.

Things work a little differently here.

I received an email over the weekend, just above one week before the start of classes, informing me of what classes are on offer. The accompanying instructions seemed simple enough: go to the classics building on Monday afternoon at an appointed time and put your name down a sign-up sheet outside the doors of the professors whose classes you are interested in taking. Sounds doable. When I showed up at 11 Woodland Road after lunch on Monday, though, I found that the door was locked and that I couldn't get in without entering the proper security code, which of course nobody gives you, on the adjacent keypad. Luckily, a student in the know came along and let me in behind him, and was even kind enough to tell me the code. Getting in, however, did me little good: none of the professors whose classes I wanted to take had posted sign-up sheets, and there was not a human being in sight. OK, I figure, I'll go home and email them. So I head for the door. I push. I pull. I twist the lock. I even grunt a little. Nothing happens. Somebody comes up behind me. I get embarassed and head back down the hallway. I don't want anyone to know that I can't open a door! I turn a corner soon enough and find another door. I push. I pull. Someone else is coming. I flee. I realize with horror that the entire row of buildings on Woodland Row is connected in the back by a massive glass maze, and I am trapped. All around me, people are walking up and down hallways covered in unopenable doors, and nobody else seems to be trying to escape. Whenever I find myself alone for a moment, I frantically push and pull on the nearest door, until I realize this is going nowhere and find myself standing staring abjectly out at the wide world beyond -- so close, yet so far! Suddenly, the fighting spirit revives. I will not be defeated by the Arts Faculty Building before I even enroll. I find one last door, and it has a keypad beside it. Holding my breath, I punch in the code the student gave me. The door clicks open! I am suddenly standing in the rain in a carpark I have never seen. But it doesn't matter. I am free.

Since my escape from the hamster playland of hell that is Woodland Road, I have made contact with several professors and begun to get things sorted out. I have appointments with several of them tomorrow to enroll in classes that have not been assigned meeting dates, times, or places -- but if this doesn't concern them, maybe it shouldn't concern me. The classicist I met today was more precisely my Greek tutor, who is also American and equally mystified by the workings of the university. I look foward to meeting the British segment of the faculty tomorrow, and maybe finally getting some answers. That is, if these people actually exist.