In normal circumstances, I would now be thrown straight into one of the most exhausting periods of the college calendar: enrolment.
I can draw many comparisons to what an open enrolment period is like at one of the biggest colleges in the country. The first twenty minutes of Saving Private Ryan; the running of the bulls at Pamplona; the last Friday before Christmas in a Wetherspoons. You get the picture. There are 12-hour days with an almost constant stream of people, a 17-stage process where every stage needs its own training session, and the delight of suddenly being in a customer service role.
The applicants seem to fall into four main categories: those who know what they want to study and can, those who know what they want to study but can’t, those who don’t know what they want to study, and those who just see an open door and wander in, looking for a chat and a hot beverage.
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One older gentleman walked in off the street determined to study something. He was leaving the building as a student or he was not leaving at all. He was not keen on paying for a course, so we suggested IT for beginners as it was free, but his first choice was French cookery. When he found out we didn’t specifically teach one night class in French cuisine he opted to study cookery and to learn to speak French, this being the closest we could get. Unfortunately, level 2 cookery clashed with GCSE French, so it was back to the drawing board.
Option two was electrical engineering because it sounded “fancy” and if he was paying, he wanted his money’s worth. When it was explained to him what electrical engineering actually was he went off this idea and we blasted through botany, archaeology, and Latin, none of which we teach, before he eventually settled on IT for Beginners after all. In total, he spent six hours in the enrolment process but never actually turned up for the class. Maybe another college offered him a botany GCSE with a side of French cuisine, who knows.
The younger students who do not know what they want to do but have been told they must get a place in college or go back to their school sixth form are experts in what I call “educational chameleonism”. Their interest in a subject is entirely governed by whether we will offer them a place on it, and so they can begin the day with a passion for history…until they find out it’s only available in a bundle with other A levels. At that point, they become passionate about music…until they learn they need to have studied music theory to get onto level 3. Then they hate music and their true passion is photography, although they don’t have a camera, and actually, now you mention it they really love sports.
Of course, this year, our entire enrolment is taking place online, and with any luck, we will realise that the 10-day onslaught of over 8000 potential students isn’t entirely necessary after all. I can’t decide whether I am going to miss the adrenaline rush - I might need to go sky diving, or stock car racing, or you know, return to a bustling building of 500 teenagers in the midst of a global pandemic...
