Wednesday, November 30, 2005

Battle against bureaucracy

Turns out I never graduated college.

"What?" you say. "But! But! Mr. Mond," you say, "you graduated in 2003!"

That's what I thought. Until today, when I started getting ready to have my transcripts sent out for my grad school apps. Hunter College, apparently, has three "stops" on my record -- and those stops have been sitting there for nearly 3 years. They've never once mentioned them to me, and thus I'm only finding out now when it's absolutely critical that my transcripts get sent out ASAP so I don't miss my application deadlines. Better still, the Hunter Registrar is only aware of one of the stops. The CUNY Grad Center, which ran my degree program (it's complicated), says Hunter has three stops on my record. So how does Hunter only know about one while CUNY GC knows about three? Good question. No answers. It's a safe bet, though, that the answer has something to do with whatever bureaucratic nonsense let them keep any stops at all on my record for three years without ever once notifying me.

So tomorrow I will spend all day in the city, driving two hours to get there, then ten hours in traffic on the way home, and hopefully when all is said and done I'll actually have graduated from college and my transcripts will be on their way to my grad schools of choice.

And just for the record -- just so the alien overlords who dig this blog up in 10,000 years know -- this is the year 2005. We are days away from it being 2006. There is absolutely no excuse for any modern American institution to be run this poorly. Alas, it turns out city agencies continue to defy our lowest expectations.

5 comments:

WeSailFurther said...

i'm around if you wanna come over for lunch. 11.35 - 1223. Or watch my classes. 11th grade we are talking politics. Federalist #10 and Chapter 2 of de Tocqueville...7th graders have one period of silent reading and one period of Common Sense by Thom Paine. I'm deep in early American History.

OlmanFeelyus said...

What does that have to do wtih city agencies? All universities are like that. It's how they justify their importance and put value on their "degrees". How can knowledge be valuable if you can't classify it, put it in a hierarchy and charge people tons of money to get it? It's total BS and you can't win. Good luck and be prepared for more grief!

OlmanFeelyus said...

Oh yeah, why are you driving into the city? You can't blame anyone but yourself for traffic if you're not going to take the train.

Mustapha Mond said...

Spoken like one who has clearly never made the trip from Port Jeff to Penn Station on the LIRR.

OlmanFeelyus said...

Done it several times. Personally, seems preferable to me to driving on the LIE. You're guaranteed a good seat, you can read, sleep, look out the window.

Preferences and comfort aside, if you don't need to drive, you shouldn't. And if you are going to drive, please don't complain about it, especially if you have mass transportation options, which so many people on the rest of the continent don't.