This reminds me of enrollment day at my first day of high school. Some genius administrator decided that it would be a good idea for the students to do a mad scramble inside the commons area trying to sign up for their classes on a first come-first serve basis. With only one entrance to the great hall open, and 600+ students waiting outside in a large crowd to get in as soon as the staff said go, it was a disaster waiting to happen.

First, all the upper classmen were allowed to sign up a day before us. Since many of them had not taken the pre-requisite and "mandatory for graduation" classes they were supposed to take in previous years, they had taken vacancies that were to be allotted for us. This meant that there would not be nearly enough seats available in those classes, which put some physical competition into the mix. A number of false starts put the crowd into a huge surge a number of times, resulting in more than a few people getting stepped on, knocked down, groped, hit, and so on. Unfortunately, I found myself smack dab in the middle of this fiasco.

Luckily, I was one of the tallest kids in our grade, so when the body pressure came, I was squeezed out to the top of the pile and avoided getting hurt. Unluckily for those standing around me, they had to bear my weight as there was simply no place for me to go but on top of them. This went on for a good 10 minutes or so, as more people ended up on top and underneath the mass. All the while, the idiot staff were screaming at us to control ourselves. This was the year when Pink Floyd's "The Wall" came out and so the irony was severe.

Needless to say, registration was a complete mess. Frustrated students and irate parents spent the next 6 months complaining to the school board and trying to find some solution. I ended up graduating with 35 out of 36 possible semester credits, because I could only take 5 classes my first year in. It was enough to graduate, but my folks were not impressed.

It took another two years for the administration to finally capitulate and go back to actually working with the students to help them get registered. I think the last go-round 3 kids ended up headed to the hospital in ambulances.

No one ever said educators had a lick of sense.