I can’t sleep. Today is the first day of classes in Santiago, and I am really anxious. I have previously shared my love of planning as far as I can for everything. However, the Santiago university system is refusing to cooperate.

I intend to take classes in two universities here—La Universidad de Chile and La Pontifica Catolica. I know that the Latin American class selection is a little warped.  Many students have commented on it. I just did not realize how strange it would be until I had to do it.

To "ease" foreign students in, both universities had an orientation.

The La Chile orientation was kind of a joke. The orientation invited all the department heads to come in and wax poetic on how great each department was. It didn’t consider that most students only truly cared about one department each and would not like to sit through two hours worth of excess departmental advertising. It also did not help that the truly important part of the orientation, the preinscription of classes, was at the end of the presentation, but that the entire orientation was held before any students had received a username or password. What also was confusing was that a booklet full of classes was handed out, but not with the complete set of classes available in the semester.

Fine, I thought as I woke up from the nap I took during the orientation, I’ll figure out my classes when I get my username and password and look online. When I looked online, things seemed hopeful. I got a full list of classes available from a department. And I could easily select a course to preinscribe to. Unfortunately, though I could select a class, I would have a hard time knowing where or even when a class is because most of the classes listed have “to be determined” for the location and for the time. And that would be fine, if not for the fact that some classes only meet once a week, which would still be fine, if not for the fact that there is only a one week “shopping period” for classes. Also, I have never visited that campus where most of my classes seem to be held. Trying to find classes with less to no information provided just made me frustrated.

As for La Catolica, the orientation was fantastic. Much better than La Chile, this orientation handed out a full set of available classes with the names of teachers, times and locations to us students right away. There was a time where a student from each department would sit around the room, and the exchange students could go up to them (separately and privately during that time) to ask about how the classes were and how the teachers were. It would be great to take only classes in La Catolica if not for the fact that to register for them, you have to file a paper request in every department (that may or may not be on different campuses) and there is no online system to fall back upon.

So there is my experience with class selection so far, I'm kind of missing the painless U.S. system, but I will try to be "tranquila" and go with the flow.