international studies office, or whom it may concern

Thank you International Studies Office for your complete incompetence. No, seriously, I'm sure you're lovely people, but wow. I'm truly impressed by the abandon with which you conduct yourselves.

What? Oh, I gave ISO my housing application in December (like the 2nd, specifically), and they didn't fax it in to my university in Germany until January 12 or something. That's cool, right, though, because technically it was still (hours) before the due date. Except it means that I didn't get into the dorm I wanted. Now I'm scheduled to live in Sonnenbühl Ost (photo from an advertisement), which has been dubbed by previous occupants "Soviet Apartment Block" (lars3). Mmm, because I know just what to look forward to with Soviet-style living (J-Term in Russia)!
So in closing, obviously not that interesting of a post, but nice to bitch to the world about ISO.

If you're bored already, STOP READING. If you're an Ole, however, and want to compare the pros and cons of setting up your own study-abroad and traveling with a different school, read on!

Okay, so I'm really not going to write much more, but here are the other problems with our ISO program at St. Olaf:
• $1000 to ISO for what? They give you a packet that says "Don't have sex with dirty prostitutes" and "Don't pet the bears." You go to a seven-hour presentation during which you write poetry on what getting out of this country means to you and and see a guy who recommends camera equipment that costs as much as tuition.
• Then you also have to turn everything in to ISO and pray that they actually hand it in. They were late with both my housing app and my pre-semester language course app. Nice. All they had to do was fax it in. I could have done that, AND done it on time.
• Finally, they act as though they'd told you all of the opportunities for scholarship, etc, but they haven't. Originally I assumed that ISO was competent, but then heard other horror stories and started to search for stipend availability last September. But it was too late! It took me about 10 minutes and I found three scholarship opportunities (adding up to around €3000 easily), but I was too late. I told ISO to add these scholarships to their lists so that future students could apply for them, but they never did.
So those are, off the top of my head, the top three reasons to do this on your own/with another college.

I promise my next posts will be of much greater interest and will probably be from while I'm abroad, not while I'm sitting here in Byron.