School's out for summer!

Ah, I feel a song coming on.

So, now that finals/graduation are said/done, I am free to resume blogging/playing video games all day. I'm glad to be done, but I could have done without the 2.5 hour snore-athon of reading people's names. With so many people graduating, it took forever just to have them file in, much less read the names. There has to be a better way to spend our tuition dollars.

In any case, the futures of my diploma/final transcipt are uncertain at the moment. Let me tell you a little story.

Last summer I took part in a study abroad program in Japan to fulfill part of my academic obligations. Peruse through the archives if you haven't read about my journey before. I was supposed to receive 6 credit hours for the experience. Upon returning to the US, someone from the Office of International Studies Programs (OISP) was supposed to be in touch with us and let us know what we needed to do to receive credit for the course. Typically, you just write a paper about your experience.

Well, we never heard from anyone. It turns out, the guy who was supposed to be in charge of that program and telling us what to do had gone on sabbatical (I can't recall; he either went to Tailand or India . . . either way, he wasn't in Kansas anymore, Toto). In his absence, we received "grades" of "CR." Basically, we were "credited" for the course.

Except we weren't. Apparently, as I've recently found out, a grade of "CR" means that while you've been credited for taking the course, that credit cannot be applied towards any graduation/degree requirements. And as my graduation audit explained to me, without a final transcript from that program of study, I'd be short one diploma come fall.

Well, this has had me in a tizzy, trying to figure out how to solve the problem. I really hate people who work at ISU. Their philosophy seems to be, "If you can't solve a student's problem, ignore them until they go away." No no, please don't tell me who I should contact to get my problems fixed. That would be playing right into my insidious hands.

And Dr. Padavil, the guy who was supposed to help us out last summer, is the guy I was supposed to finally get in touch with this summer. And guess what? He's out of the country again! The best part is, I had to call his secretary to find out and inform OISP about this. "Wait a second Hal, are you telling me that the International Studies office didn't know that a professor, in charge of one of their programs, had left for another country with students involved with said program?" Yes, dear reader, that is exactly what I'm saying. Yeesh.

Normally I don't make my entries so personal, but there's a lesson in here somewhere about procrastination (on the part of professors) and inflated bureaucracies and so on, but it's hard to find them in my frustration with this stupid, stupid school. Thank goodness I can forever leave that school behind once they send out that transcript.