Student ID card

Getting a student ID card is important. If you do not get a student card ID before you graduate your degree will be classified as a non-degree. What that means is that if you do want to make it a degree you will have to transfer your credits over to the degree porgram at a 1000 b cost each credit. Considering that BA degree requires 144 credits thats a hefty fee for not having a student ID.

Today I got to experience the wonderful process of getting a student ID:

- Go through a box in the main office on the 7th floor of the IIS orange bldg (what's the name of this building anyway?) and find your file.

- When everyone has found their file, grab the  box with all the files the students did not find, and walk as a parade with your pretty pink folders to some other bldg and go to the 3rd floor.

- Go to a room that cannot accommodate the sheer volume of students where you open your folder and fill the forms out. You have to use specific lead (2h) and try and figure out what the Thai forms say.

- Wait for one of the 4 or 5 office staff to get to you and fill your form out for you.

- From here you have to go and get the form approved.

- Next wait at a table where your name is found in your batch, sign the paper and be given 8 identical stickers with a number on them which will in effect be your student ID.

- Go to the 7th floor where you go and sit while some person looks like they are doing something and they give you your file back and direct you to go to the 2nd floor.

- Go to the 2nd floor and to be exact fill out an application for a bank card.

- That’s it.

There you have it, the still mystifying process of getting a student ID card. Normally I would not even bother writing about this stuff except I have been waiting for this ‘ID’ for over a year. For the most part things went smoothly except for the questions that were actually on the forms that needed to be filled in which I take offence too, such as what religion I am, None of your fucking business thank you, and what is your fathers and mothers professions, once again fuck you thanks, I was waiting for chest size or penis length or some other relevant question that was going to just rub up against me the wrong way.

What bothers me is that I had to pay the financial equivalent of 250 b or 1/2 a day of an 8 day course to do this. I missed half a day and this offends me. When the course is a real course I do not miss any time. I don’t want to miss time. I also have already paid an administration fee for this card I forget the actual cost as I paid it a year ago in my tuition but I think in the vicinity of 800 – 1200 b.

I am a bit dumbfounded as to why the office cannot handle this entire procedure. Firstly the forms were in the office in the first place in my pretty pink folder. The office staff ended up filling in the forms for me anyway. These forms could have been filled out on any of the few spare hours of my time I have had over the past year or on one of the several breaks I had. So I have this question. Why did I actually have to participate in this process? The only think I needed to do was sign some forms. This could have been done easily over the past year.

I would be interested in a real discussion as to why we, the students, for the most part are even involved in this process.