The requests for room changes are coming in like Hurricane Felix. They would bring a less stalwart person to their knees or a nervous breakdown. I’m either too stupid or too stubborn to succumb to the avalanche of email and I just keep persevering in the face of almost inevitable defeat. But I’ve never gotten to the third week of a semester with more than 6 people disappointed/angry about their rooms and I don’t want to break that record. So I keep on trying.
I’ve had to tell a lot of people, “I don’t have anything right now but I will continue to check.” This is not a euphemism for “I’m forgetting about you but I’ll pretend I’m not so you won’t keep asking”. I really DO have a system for keeping the requests circulating and eventually finding suitable matches that may not be made in heaven but will at least last for 15 weeks.
As you know, there are very few open classrooms with no one in them. Therefore we have to rely on taking one person’s discards and making them someone else’s desire. Every time I get an email requesting a room change (about 10 an hour) I label it with the days and meeting times (ex. MWF 9-9:50) and what kind of room/location they want to move to (ex. smart room in building 12). I keep all the different requests separated by phase so I can immediately look at my other MWF 9-9:50 requests and see if I can match the new request to a waiting request. If not, I keep it until the next request for the same time phase comes in and I check again. That means I may be checking your personal request against the other requests a dozen times a day. You have NOT been forgotten.
It also means that your request will probably not be processed the day it is received. I am currently working on 27 requests that haven’t found matches and processing 13 requests that found matches today. It’s a continuing process of rolling requests, matches, room changes, Banner input, sign making and posting, emailing etc. So please be assured that no one is forgotten and even though it may take longer than you’d like something good may come out of the wait. I can’t give everyone the perfect room but hopefully most of you will get a room that works well. Of course there will always be a few who have to ‘make do’ but I try to keep those to a minimum—six or less!
Deborah Benjamin
Registration and Records
09/06/2007 |