Turning in assignments should be easy, but at my university in England it is more of an ordeal. On Wednesday, an outline for a paper was due by 5:00 pm. Now, this was for one of my Thursday classes, and to me it makes much more sense to have it due on the day we have class, instead of a day early. This is compounded by the fact that the Business campus, where my Thursday classes are located, is a 25 minute bus ride each way for me. That is 50 minutes total of travel time needed to simply hand in an assignment.
Then, instead of turning it in to our professor, our assignment sheet only said to put the paper in the provided box in the Business Undergraduate Center. That was the only direction. It did not say which building is the Undergraduate Center (it is not labeled) and it did not specify where the box would be in that building.
So, on Wednesday, I finished up the outline and caught the 2:05 pm bus to the business campus. I entered the library to find that every computer was taken. After taking an awkward lap around the library, I found that every single computer was taken. Sitting down in a red arm chair among the bookshelves, I check my email on my iPod, waiting for someone to leave. Ten minutes later I made another lap and found a free computer.
Unfortunately, this computer was next to two boys speaking loudly in a foreign language, I am guessing German or some Eastern European language. I kept waiting for one of the people working at the main library desk to come over and tell them to be quite. It is a library after all, but no one did. I did some final editing to the outline and printed it.
Needing to find out exactly where the turn-in box was located, I asked the librarian hoping that he would know. He had absolutely no idea, and called someone who also had no idea. He was able to direct me to the building known as the Business Undergraduate Center. It actually turns out that this is a building I hang out in between classes. The first floor has a cafe and seating areas, but there are office upstairs.
Upstairs there were a lot of doors to choose from. I went left to a circular room lined with computers labeled at the "Student Help Area." Well, there was no one around to help me with my current predicament so I went back to the stairs and went right. One door had a small sign outside labeling it as the undergraduate office and I could see some people inside from the door window.
I opened the door to find about six desks arranged around the room with people behind them, all of whom were now staring at me. Nervous with all of their eyes on me, I managed to explain that I was trying to turn in a paper for a class. One woman with bob length blonde hair understood what I was asked and said, "You just go done the hall past the computer room and go down the stairs on the right. The boxes are just downstairs." I thanked her and followed her directions out of the room.
At the base of the stairs I was once again completely confused. There were several doors leading out of the stairwell but the woman had not given me any further directions. Searching around the stairwell, lit only by the sunlight drifting in through a window, I found the boxes behind the stairs. The boxes were about two feet tall, wooden with a slit cut into the front. There were six, a row of three stacked two high. Only three were labeled with a piece of paper stating the name and number of the class and the assignment due date. I slid my paper inside and my task was complete.
I understand why it might be save class time for everyone to hand in their assignments into a box and not directly to the teacher, especially in a class of over one hundred people. But why on Earth would you decided that the best place to put those boxes would be in the back corner of a building (one of the farthest from the campus entrance I might add), in a stairwell, behind the stairs. There are not even any signs to help people find it. I guess they just expect everyone to know where it is, or just have them wander around cluelessly like I did.
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