I'm an American, baby. I come from the land of drive-thru, pay-per-view and 20-minutes-or-less delivery. I'm all about instant gratification.
If only the Brits shared my sentiments.
In the past month, I have encountered a monster, the likes of which we have never seen in the States, and probably the true reason that Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and all those others put their names on the Declaration of Independence: British bureaucracy.
Take, for example, the ordeal I had in merely opening up a bank account. The second day I was in London, I went to a bank, filled out a rainforest of papers, submitted my passport, proof of address, DNA sample, etc., and left with ... uh ... the promise that I would have a bank account soon.
About two weeks later, I have mail! Is it a card? An account number? Of course not! I tear open the envelope to find that my account has been opened, and that I should come to the bank in a week or so to get my card. I begin to wonder if my memories of getting everything I needed the day I opened my Commerce Bank account were just delusions brought on by my diet of canned baked beans and Weetabix.
I show up a week later, and finally get my card. Woo-hoo! Wait, what? I can't make a PIN now - I have to wait for you to order the PIN and that should take another week to come to the bank (because sending it to my address would gravely endanger the fortune of a few hundred pounds I have)? Why didn't you order the PIN back when ... never mind. Can you order it now?
You know you've compromised your standards when someone doing something shortly after you ask seems as miraculous as a perpetual motion machine.
So, here I sit, wondering when my bank account will become more than a well of no-return for the weekly allowance checks Tufts gives me. I'm hoping the pin number will be the end of it, but I shiver thinking of what hoop I will have to jump through next to get something relatively simple.
Because this bank story is not the exception in England. It's the rule.
What do I mean? Here's a little rundown of how to enroll in classes at a London university:
First, you must go to the main building and formally enroll at the college. Apparently, sending your acceptance letter, moving into a dorm and paying the university thousands upon thousands of dollars may still leave some of the Brits skeptical about how committed you really are. I blame all the rebellions they had to deal with in their empire. It's left them paranoid.
After a grueling process of finding a letter showing that you are, in fact, accepted to enroll at the university (because, you know, having your name on a database couldn't possibly work), you are indeed enrolled.
Then you just have to wait in line to get a form to give to the people so they may take an ID photo, run around to various departments to talk to professors about classes you want to take (and to prove that you're qualified), e-mail those professors, sign up in the department, slay the fearsome five-headed acid-breathing dragon of Croatoan, use an overly complicated online system that makes me nostalgic for SIS, and finally ... you can wait to find out if you're in the classes you picked.
I could go on about how the process is similar for everything from a subway pass to a Tesco Club Card (yes, you read that right), but of course, there are more forms that must be filed instead.
Devin Toohey is a junior majoring in classics and studying abroad in London. He can be reached at Devin.Toohey@tufts.edu
