Bureacracy Meltdown.

Graduation is an exercise in surviving bureaucracy. The very worst part however comes at the very end, like a sucker punch when you are the most tired and cranky. Let me explain.

As I chronicled in earlier posts, I found my web usability course to be very difficult. Not that it wasn't worth the effort, but my particular instructor assigned a great deal of coursework and set high standards from the beginning. While I admit that a lot of my problems started with some acute symptoms of senioritis, by the time final grades were submitted I had raised my average to a solid B with stellar work on the later assignments and projects. Lo and behold however, when I logged on to the university website to check my grades one morning there was an “F” in the rightful place of my hard-earned “B”.

I felt sick and dizzy, wondering what I had done wrong. I emailed my professor and asked for an explanation only to receive something similar to a form letter that didn't answer any of my questions. I examined all of my grades only to discover several errors in the online grade book. First of all, one of the assignments had not been recorded at all. Then after I noticed it was not recorded in the right field lowering my grade another full point. My instructor delivered me a speech along the lines of “I'm sorry this class prevented you from moving on”. After all the mistakes were corrected I had indeed earned a “B” grade. If I actually had failed this course not only would my graduation party be in vain but I would have to shell out $1500 to enroll in another course and wait until December for everything to clear.

My second issue occurred when I received a call yesterday from the SJSU SLIS office regarding my candidacy. Perhaps in a naïve fashion, I assumed that since physical graduation already happened and nobody had contacted me that I was in the clear. Not only that but my candidacy had already been approved in a congratulations type letter about a month beforehand. The first question from the lady on the phone (whose name will not be disclosed) was “did you graduate?”. Not a good sign. It turns out I had one last piece of bureaucracy to deal with. I had to fill out a course substitution form and submit it immediately so the Graduate Admissions & Program Evaluation.

It didn't help that the program Preview on my MacBook would not accurately send a PDF form in a recognizable format to the folks in the PC-centric university administration headquarters. It only took twenty times before I pinpointed the problem and had to download a new PDF program for Mac OSX that would accurately send the form. I am indeed graduating.

Yes, these are many boring details but at the same time they have reminded me that I can never just expect that I will be in the clear when paperwork is involved. Mistakes will be made. Unjust charges will be made to credit cards and refunds delivered months late. Sometimes I am too laid back and choose not to think about certain things in a kind of fear that they will be solved. But now I know that I have to continue to ask questions, correct things in a direct manner and never assume that things will just happen on their own.