My university prides in its efficiency in the form of technology. We have the facility to register our laboratory and tutorial sessions online (which, sadly, not many lecturers would utilise it, not even the IT lecturers, much to our chagrin!) and we also have the convenience of being able to register for our next semester subjects on the Internet, too. Therefore, you can say my university cares quite a lot about technology.

But imagine my frustration when I am forced to drop a subject that I have registered for this semester. Professional Communication Skills, or PCS, is a subject that is scheduled for me to take this semester, therefore I signed up for it in the course registration. My friends and I spent days trying to find out which lecture slot would fit our timetable and not long after setting up our timetable (in which I found my Moral Studies lecture clashing with Principles of Solid Mechanics), we read the announcement from the E-Learning that PCS is open to students who are due to go for industrial training next semester and those who have just came back from the training.

Therefore, the others have to drop the subject. No further negotiation. I sent an e-mail to my lecturer, but later on I was told he won't be back until Wednesday. So, I called up three other lecturers. All of them told me that they could accommodate 600 students for PCS but at the moment they received 1000 plus registrations, and out of that, 400 are students returning from industrial training. And to top that up, the second lecturer whom I called was condescending in tone, unfriendly and most of all, unhelpful.

It is so unfair to us students who are scheduled to take up that subject, only to be forced to have it delayed to a later semester. But how long are we to defer it? In addition to that, they are not suggesting us the other options to take in place of PCS! So now that they are having a problem of their own, they dump all the responsibilities on us innocent students, eh? And even if we do register for another subject, how sure are we that they will not clash with our current classes at all? Fine enough, we could check the module timetable, but for your information, I have a friend who currently cannot find any subject that will suit his timetable without clashing with anything. Go figure.

When asked about this matter at the Registration Unit, they seemed to be utterly blur about what is going on, and I was told that it was the unit that issued the directive to the PCS coordinator to have the first and second year students to drop PCS.

The main question is why does the university still require these students who are going for the industrial training and those returning from it to do PCS? This PCS course was made compulsory just last semester. Previously, it was offered as an elective course. Can they not exempt these group of third year students onwards from PCS?

Now, about 500 or 600 students in the first year must delay their PCS till much later. How late? And when these 500 to 600 students take PCS in their later semesters, wouldn't this cause the future first year students to have their PCS delayed as well? How long do they intend to delay, then? Conclusion: Inefficient!

And besides, what's the point of setting it in the course planner, only to find out we aren't going to follow it at all? Why must we as students be subjected to all this absurdity due to negligence of other parties? They should have known better, right?