Third post for the day but who’s counting?
This is what’s going on outside our house. That’s my red car in the drive:
/ 
Don’t you just love academia? The obvious answer is no.
The grade for my summer project posted Monday but I didn’t see my MA degree posted so, being a diligent and alert student, I emailed a polite WTF message to the grad school. I was told by the department admin that I didn’t have a whatzerform signed off after my MA exam last May. A simple fix, but what’s got my fur up is that I read the graduate handbook and asked this very dude “Do I need anything else?” about a thousand times last semester, and was always told no. In fact, this same guy told me that technically I couldn’t graduate until after my summer course posted, yet now I’m being blamed for not having the form (which I was never given and have never seen) filled out in May. And of course, when in doubt, blame the student. Makes my blood boil, and long-term readers of this space will remember the long and grueling ordeal I went through in order to get everything aligned last spring. Yes, I understand that there are disorganized graduate students who fly by the seats of their pants; I am not one of them and it rankles me to be blamed for someone else’s shoddy work.
And I do realize I’m not alone in my frustrations. Amy got a call yesterday from her program admin saying that she couldn’t register for her fall classes (which start next week) because her TB immunization was about to expire…at the end of November? Maybe I’m stupid, but I thought immunizations were good until, you know, their expiration date?
I tell myself to take deep breaths. Really, that’s all you can do.
Current Mood: Irritated to No End | 
9 Comments
And even if you DO everything correctly, there’s still no guarantee that people will understand the procedures and set you up correctly. Slightly oblique case in point:
Today I registered my vehicles for the Fall semester. It’s always complicated because (a) I’m part-time and (b) given my 155-mile round trip a day, I register two vehicles in case one is in the shop. Today I was registering the same two vehicles, but Michigan is in the process of changing all the old blue license plates to white license plates, so both vehicles have new plate numbers. The state registration cards have both the old plate and the new plate on them. I explained what I needed and they almost deleted the second vehicle, because it didn’t have the same license plate as the Summer parking sticker. Uh, yeah. That’s because the plates changed. The state of Michigan has been doing this for most of the year — do you mean to tell me that no one has brought in a change of plate at all during 2007? It can’t be that unique. (Grin)
Dr. Phil
What the hell are they doing to your… what is that, the street?
We’re not entirely sure what they’re doing to the street. Turning it inside out, apparently. Three blocks of sheer pandemonium though.
Don’t you know anything about street work? They’re digging a hole so that one man with a shovel can stand in the bottom of it and five guys can stand around the top of the hole watching him. This is called supervision, and it’s the basis of all 20th century civilization.
Dr. Phil
Good point, Phil. Only in this case the “shovel” happens to be a gigantic machine. this is the one they’re using one block down and it’s heading our way.
Wow! How do you get out of your driveway?
Believe it or not, they fill in the holes each night. But it’s a complete mess and our front yard (as well as every yard on the block) is basically trashed. The neighbor across the way put down a rock garden in his area between the sidewalk and the road just a few years ago and he had to rip the whole thing up. It’s a real pain and, best of all, we get to pay for it! It’s improving our street, you see.
Don’t you love paying for things you didn’t ask for?
Yes, I understand that there are disorganized graduate students who fly by the seats of their pants; I am not one of them and it rankles me to be blamed for someone else’s shoddy work.
I am! ::beams proudly::