Spring Class Clusterf*ck

If you haven't already figured it out, City College of San Francisco is pretty fucked up. I started taking classes this fall without transferring any of my credits from my old school simply because I decided to sign up at the very last minute. One of my classes, Calc II, had a prerequisite of Calc I. Was this a problem? Nope, I could register for Calc II even though I hadn't bothered transferring Calc I yet.

Fast forward to now where I'm trying to get in to Eng 40, an advanced composition course. I've already taken the equivalent Eng 1 course at the other college but it's taking me forever to transfer the courses. Is this a problem? Absolutely! No one can register me in Eng 40 without seeing paper from the english department saying that I've passed some form of an Eng 1 course. So it's no problem having unprepared students in a Calc II class (which is the hardest of Calc I, II and III) but HEAVEN FORBID they get into a composition course without being VERIFIED as taken Eng 1.

Furthermore, transferring courses is simple if you're just trying to get an associates degree at CCSF. Just have your college send your transcript to you or the CCSF admissions office and fill out a simple form. They'll evaluate the entire thing and get back to you. But if you're in CCSF for the purposes of transferring elsewhere, like myself, you must schedule a meeting with a transfer adviser two weeks in advance who will only tell you that you need to get the classes individually approved by the heads of each department. If you can find a way to communicate with the department heads (I've only been successful with one so far), they'll give you a time to come to them (maybe a week or two later) with your transcript and course descriptions so that they can write you equivalency forms for each course under that department. This is mind-numbingly roundabout and painful.

Seriously Berkeley, can I get credit in Navigating Red Tape 101 for this?