Steam Vent · 6:07pm Nov 19th, 2015
As the title implies, this blog is personal, a form of catharsis more than anything else. Feel free to ignore it.
I have been in college for the past ten years. I still haven't graduated yet. A large amount of the blame rests on my shoulders, but not all of it. Allow me to run you through the past year and change:
Spring 2014: Put on academic suspension due to my own foolishness.
Fall 2014: Realize I misunderstood the requirements to get that suspension lifted: It can only be done through summer courses. Take a year-long hiatus.
Summer 2015: Sign up for two garbage classes to get suspension lifted. Get booted out of one course because college's payment system hates checks. Struggle to get situation acknowledged, much less resolved. Get As in both courses.
July-August 2015: Upon completing second course, encounter financial hold. Spend weeks trying to get financial office, registrar to acknowledge payments. Again. Go through three departments until I find someone who can actually do something, who happily does so in a matter of seconds. Encounter academic hold that no one remembered to lift. Navigate bureaucracy again. Sign up for course that will complete major. Try to sign up for any one of about a dozen courses that will complete minor, only to find that every single one of them is full.
September-October 2015: Complete course, which is literally taking thirty short physics quizzes. I will be getting a B, because I have stopped caring enough to take the oral exam.
November 3, 2015: Try to sign up for sole remaining course. Encounter academic lock. Find there was an e-mail I missed in late August which, as worded, seemed to say that I was put on academic probation for getting a poor GPA during the two semesters I didn't attend school. This comes with a required academic counseling meeting that had to occur before November. It didn't; I'm locked out. Write to academic dean asking what more they want from me.
November 4, 2015: Dean's reply explains that school policy is that those coming off of suspension are automatically put on probation. She says I received multiple notifications. Technically true: One in August, one now. I resignedly schedule a counseling meeting. Earliest available one this coming Tuesday! ... No, wait, it was just taken. It'll have to be the 19th.
Today: Go to meeting. Genial and pleasant all around. Commiserate with dean about insanity of school bureaucracy. She says the lock should be lifted by noon. Go home, check schedule of classes. Every course that will let me graduate is filled. Realize I should have checked this before meeting with the dean.
The good news is that the department is aware of the incredible demand and has established a request form, which I have used. The bad news is that they say I won't hear back from them until a week before classes begin.
Ready for the punchline? It's the computer science department. The e-mail field on the form didn't have enough room for every character of my school-provided e-mail address.
So, yeah. Everything is terrible, and it's ultimately my fault. I am not in a good mood. If anyone's still reading this, thanks for doing so until the end.
Sounds like a lot of this is really shitty bureaucracy, not you. Good job on staying in school and not dropping out and becoming a musician/tutor/lyft driver like I did.
I feel your pain man
aint bureaucracy grand...
I really hope the whole situation will be resolved soon and without further stress. If it is some kind of consolation, bureaucratic insanity seems to come with universities all around the world, only in slightly different flavors.
Good luck with all that stuff, and stay strong in the face of layered, paper fueled insanity.
College in general is clunky as fuck. I went in to study journalism and had to take a class on marine biology at one point because it was the only "course with a lab component" available that semester for someone that hadn't spent the previous semester taking science courses. I also had to take either French or a math course. No idea why they thought those were of equivalent importance, let alone interchangeable. French numbers make even less sense. Out of all the classes that were listed as required, only political ideology, "two philosophy courses" (ethics and critical thinking), and economics were actually relevant. My roommates have an art degree and half a pharmacist degree between them and one works at a place that makes playground equipment, the other does laundry at a hotel.
I'm honestly kind of disillusioned with college. Just glad I didn't head off to Saskatchewan for that film degree, I doubt that would have gone any better and it would have been way more expensive.
Eeeehhhhhh......
The only constant in the world is bureaucratic stupidity.
I'm sorry, man. That sounds awful.
And here I though that Brasil was the Burocracy equivalent of a living hell...we learn somethign new everyday !
Damn, and I thought college kicked my ass.
Sounds like the sort of situation that would make Kafka himself curl up in a ball and weep.
I'm reminded of a dialogue from the Transformers fan script "Bee in the City":
Optimus: What's stronger than heavily armed robots?
Sari: Even... more heavily armed robots?
Optimus: No, something that's been tripping us up since we got here.
Bumblebee: Oh... Bureaucracy!
Then they proceed to threaten the enemy machines with paperwork, which makes them turn on their creator (Beast Wars Megatron).
It sounds like a rough time.
I probably would have given up and started yelling at people but you kept rolling with those punches. That takes so much determination.
Hope everything works out in the end.
Yeah, I don't think you can blame yourself for all the bureaucracy. It sounds to me like they just want to chew on you until you stop squeaking.
Damn, son. Sucks. I would have just left and tried to get a job at Wizards if I was in your place.
Dear lord.
As someone who joined the Navy to pay off student loans (couldn't get a job with my three degrees), I kind of understand what you're going through. Not nearly as bad as your end, though. Keep on trucking.
Dealing with bureaucracy: Something I wouldn't wish upon even my worst enemy.
While I'm not very knowledgeable about Greek mythology, a quick search has made it fairly clear to me why you're feeling like Sisyphus right now...
I wish I knew what else to say, but I'm afraid all I can offer is my sympathy.
Being a freshman in college was the most wonderful three years of my life.
At least back in the Dark Ages, you could get Special Permission to sign up for a closed course because X% of students always dropped them after a day or two. Of course, I signed up for classes my first two years of college using punch cards, so YMMV.
Our Active Directory system at work restricts us to 20 character user names BUT does not keep you from entering a 21 character name. It's just once you have the name entered, you can't log in with it or get email or anything, but it still *looks* ok in AD. That was fine, except for the administrator we hired with a 18 character name, who then got an admin account that starts out it.first.last and hit the 21 character limit. I think we lost something out of computer usability when we did away with punch cards...
Since you already spoke with the Dean, your best bet is to call him/her back up and use that meeting as a lever to get that special permission to enroll in the closed class, which is what you will need to graduate (emphais on this point). Preface conversations with "When I was talking with the Dean, he/she said..." (and make sure that's what he/she said) in order to break down doors that would otherwise remain closed. Oh, and WRITE the Dean a physical paper thank you note for his/her assistance.
Ouch, man!
You have my full sympathies. I've also spent way too long at the university, and it's my own damn fault for the most part, but thank goodness I've mostly managed to avoid weird bureaucratic hiccups, and the few that have come up have always been quickly and painlessly fixed. Best of luck with finishing your studies and graduating!
3553581
I'm going to be seeing the CS adviser come Monday to see if there's anything more I can do from my end. We'll see what comes of that.
That sucks.
Duuuuuuuuuuude... that blows. Pretty sure Ghost wonders why I dislike Dotted Line's profession as a beaurocrat, and it'd be situations just like this. FUCKING PAPERWORK hindering you from your job or whatever. I try to avoid crap like filling forms out as much as possible. At work, they like us to fill out forms for using up band aids. And if you work out stock to any degree, you're bound to get a papercut off a cardboard box. So I keep band aids in my wallet instead of condoms. It's just easier that way. Uhh... be proactive or whatever so you don't have to fill out as shitton of forms or wait a friggin long time?
Hmm... I don't think I'm helping you with this at all, Foamy. Oh, I know! I got a funny Magic story that'll cheer you up!
So yeah, years ago, this guy wanted to trade for one of my Vedillion Cliques. I looked and looked through his binder and couldn't find anything. He didn't have any money to buy it off, so we resorted to trying to trade for other things. One of my suggestions was sexual favours—what?! I was younger, hornier, and hadn't ever heard the simple idea of "restraint". Look, he was good looking, and I'm pretty sure I was a far more horrible person back then.
Needless to say, that didn't fly, even if I had been joking (not really). So I suggested he trade his soul for it. And at the end of Magic Night, he was all for it, for Vedillion Clique, as you may know, fucks up hands good and he really fucking wanted it. At the time I carried mini "trade your soul to [name redacted] for crap" contracts in my wallet, so I wrote one up for Vedillion Clique and he signed his soul away.
At the time, Vedillion Clique was $15. Last I checked, it's over $50. Yeah. I think he may have traded swell, actually. Perhaps too well...
Oh. And I own [name redaction is importunt :B]'s soul. It's in a cash box buried somewhere in my house :3
Still not getting your mind of your troubles, Foamy? Hmm... remember that discussion we had about Diabolical Tutor? That's worth a laff :B
Now add hectafalatio to the mix
Also this:
SYNERGY
I LOVE IT
Ok, it's prolly a result of mashing two different systems together or whatever the hell. Don't stop the results from being quite hilarious and cringe worthy. Uhh... bring it up with the tech man guy? Beat up the tech man guy until he points fingers at the other tech man guy. You will eventually find out who is to blame for this lack of space. But since this is paperwork crap, you might have to beat in the head of some nerd in the aquatic club. Fuck. This leads nowhere.
Is there any wonder how Azorius turned out to be far more evil than Dimir and Rakdos and Orzhov combined at the end of Dissension?
3553711
I'm sure the clique would approve of being used to get someone's soul, though they'd probably be disappointed that you couldn't work any dreams into the deal.
#szadekdidnothingwrong
Hugs. I assure you the end result will be worth the (remaining) effort required to achieve it.
JoE
"hugs" It's not your fault :( You did everything they wanted and more. If anyone's to blame, it's all that bureaucracy crap
If you ever want to talk about it, my door's always open.
Oh wow. Your story might as well have been mine, dude. It took me nearly as long, for some things that were my fault, and some that were not, including the bureaucracy BS along the same line (in addition to health stuff). I empathize, for real.
...
Dude, careful of your posture and your hands.
And this is why I stopped trying to go college for that kind of thing.
After getting essentially made homeless due to financial bullshit, well...
~Skeeter The Lurker
Bureaumancy is truly the most accursed school of magic.
I can't offer much more than sympathy, given that I too struggled with college (albeit in a different way) for about four years out of an expected two until some soul searching made me decide I was wasting my time, at which point I just gave up and dropped out.
I admire your determination in the face of this nonsense.
You are stronger than I. I dropped out a long time ago.
This absolutely sucks, and I say that from the faculty end. Students come in, saying that the administration blows chunks, especially the registrar's office, and all we can say is "we know."
3553581
Can I just say that this sounds like a really bad idea? Again, this is coming from the faculty end. Ultimately, it IS the bureaucracy you're dealing with, not the faculty, who probably would like to help but can't. You have no IDEA what kinds of pressures are being put on us. For example: as much as I'd like to let a few more people into my Harry Potter class, I can't. And why? Because the room capacity is 37. And somehow, my department "lost" a couple of classrooms, so we are teaching on sufferance of the School of Engineering, and we cannot have any other classrooms, yea verily, no switches are possible. We're pushed to let in more, we're pushed not to let in more . . . . my favorite was when the fire marshall informed us that our office doors had to be kept closed at all times, and I said cynically, "what, when a student is in the office?" and they had to admit that there was literally no way we could do both. (Having the door open at all times won, BTW.)
Ringing in the Dean with a faculty member usually means "you are in deep shit." A colleague or a student has complained about you and you are being called on the carpet. The Dean doesn't get involved with enrolling a single student and a single faculty member. The best bet is a faculty member, an advisor, and/or a department chair.
As for the registrar's/financial aid office: have I told you about the time there was a computer malfunction and/or financial aid checks came in late, and dozens of students were bounced out of our intro composition classes, and all of their spots were filled immediately, and then the registrar's office sent around an apology/not-apology stating that this thing had happened and that they were to come around to us and that we were to "accommodate" enough students to open up seven or eight more sections? No? Or maybe that I chaired a committee for two years and the Registrar had a seat on that committee, and I am still recovering from the sheer physical devastation: I have a compressed nerve in my neck, a tremor in my cheek, and a ruined digestive system. Academic administration is pure evil in a can.
The bright side, FoME, is that they probably are delaying giving you a permission number because they can't give you one, and are waiting for the inevitable drops as students see that spots in the courses they really WANT open up. And that probably won't happen until the drop/add period starts, but when that happens, there's a reasonable chance you'll get in if you're persistent.
3554909 I'll bow to your more applicable (and recent) experience. My one experience with the Dean of our department was quite positive. She bent heavens and earth to help any paying student with a problem that needed a hammer. (And in the CS department, we had classes with over 75% attrition, so an overbooked class at enrollment was nearly empty at finals time. This is the class that I attended from day one despite not being enrolled in it, bought the book from somebody who was dropping, and slipped in officially when the attendance numbers fell enough for me to write a check.)
She was a *horrible* teacher, though. I had her in one other class that she taught because they couldn't find an instructor for it.
Damn. That's worse than the school I go to. At least the bureaucracy is rather well oiled here.
I can't fathom how you must feel… the fact that you're still able to communicate in sentences is a testament to your perseverance in the face of adversity. I'm so very sorry you're going through this, but it won't last forever. You've made it this far, don't let 'em off the hook until you've got that silly piece of paper that gets you a better starting position on the corporate ladder.
Speaking of that, if you think school bureaucracy is a mess, well… The fact that you've navigated through so much BS without being escorted into a padded room means you'll have a leg up on dealing with all the insanity that invariably follows a steady paycheck. The best coworkers I've ever had are the ones who can handle that chaos with aplomb. The worst coworkers I've ever had, even if they were some of the smartest, buckled under pressure and setbacks and took everyone nearby down with them.
3554909
In fairness to Georg, it seems to me that name-dropping the Dean would be done mainly to the bureaucrats of the Registrar's Office, not to perfectly innocent faculty members.
That really sounds like most of that was an incredibly ill managed bureaucracy's fault, not yours.
Unfortunately academic administrators do have an unrivaled ability to mess us around. Hope you find a way to sort it out.
I almost wish bureaucratic obstruction was some kind of (minor) crime. Of course, any civilization that tried to do that would probably experience spontaneous existential failure. It would be riskier than avoiding tax collectors.
I work at a University and I've been through the system several times. None of this is surprising to me.
Keep squeaking that wheel.
Well, you should probably stick with it now. Props for not giving up.
3554909 Have you got lecture outlines from your Harry Potter class online?