All in a day's work

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It's been all systems go this week for Registration Officer, Anne Johnson (aka 'Queues Officer'). Together with colleagues in the Student Systems Office, she co-ordinates the freshers' hectic whirl of welcome and orientation events. Then there's the small matter of registering all 9,000 students on the University's database, collecting their tuition fees and dispensing student loans.

We start planning quite early. In early May we published the framework timetable, with dates of the main registration, induction and social events. Between May and the end of June we collected detailed information from Schools, GRCs, the Students' Union and other units, and wrote the registration and welcome booklet itself.

The booklet went to press at the end of July, once we'd got feedback from the draft. In early September we sent all students a registration pack, including the booklet, which should tell them everything they need to know for the first week or two.

Although there are separate booklets for postgraduate and undergraduate entrants this year, the two freshers' weeks are virtually the same. A few induction events are specifically aimed at one group, and the welcome speeches are different, but almost everything else is replicated in each programme. It's easy to forget that a lot of postgraduates are only 21.

Most of the summer vacation is spent preparing for the registration event itself, and finalising the detailed arrangements for induction and welcome events. The Student Accounts Office and other Registry offices are also very busy during this period in the run-up to registration.

This week is basically welcome and orientation for freshers - the proper academic work starts in week one. Because it went so well last year, we've built on the same model, but the social programme's got more things going on. As a result of the feedback we got in 1999, there's a lot more involvement of student societies and there's a lot more happening this weekend.

The registration event in Bramber House is the busiest part of my job, and lasts almost a fortnight. Registration used to be much more paper-based, but now all 40-odd staff have a networked computer so they can look up the student's account and print it straight off the student records database. It's helping us to have more up-to-date information and be more efficient - the aim being that people don't have to queue so much.

In 1998 there were massive queues; we were unprepared for the impact of the new tuition fee arrangements for UK students. However, I was impressed by the stoicism of our new students, many of them standing in the queue for hours. A lot of them bonded - I've even heard about relationships springing up as a result of meeting in the queue, lifelong friendships forming ...

Last year, thankfully, we were better prepared and there were very few queues. People brought along cushions and Thermos flasks expecting to have to queue again, but many of them didn't, because we'd allocated more time to registration.

Also, in 1999 we introduced the new 'fast-track' registration system for returning undergraduates, which allowed many of them to simply collect their registration cards from School offices. About 1,500 have qualified for fast-track this year - a third of our returning undergraduates - so that should help to reduce the queues at registration.

Registration arrangements for 2000 have virtually stayed the same because it went so well in 1999. So, fingers crossed, I'm hoping to lose the title of 'Queues Officer' at last!

• Full details of freshers' week and registration are on the Web at www.susx.ac.uk/Units/sso/regwel.shtml.