seriously, kids. read your emails. in shiny things

I know the university sends you a lot of emails. And reading emails is hard work. Apparently. But. If you applied to graduate in May, please don't just assume walking across the stage means that, !!!!ta da!!!! You're a graduate!!!! I could go walk across the stage. That crazy guy who wanders around downtown yelling at people and frightening the tourists could walk across the stage. Doesn't mean we're magically graduated. Well, I already am and have been for quite some time, and actually Crazy Guy could be too for all I know. But my point is any damn body can walk across the stage at any damn graduation ceremony and that does not mean they have been granted a degree.

Obviously I'm dealing with the "OMG I WALKED IN THE CEREMONY IN MAY OF COURSE I GRADUATED!!!!" kids. Who ignored the many many emails they were sent regarding their graduation deficiencies that if not corrected would keep them from being granted a degree. The emails that started arriving back in March. Tuesday was the absolute last day for clearing up the shortages, so yesterday I sent a generic email to everyone who applied for May or for last December but had shortages so didn't graduate yet has never applied again for another semester. I'm trying to prepare for Future Graduation Hell when everything is changing and it will be very difficult to keep up with applicants as we'll be doing two or three semesters at once.

Of course I get a call from Panic Boy who had ignored all five emails he's been sent, starting in March, telling him he needs one more class to graduate. Because he had a substitution for that class!!!! And he didn't need it!!!!!

I don't know about you, but if I had taken one class as a substitute for another class, yet I got five emails telling me I was short that class to graduate, I'd be calling someone way before I got to the fifth email to see why they kept telling me that. And at that point, probably in MARCH, actually, I'd have discovered that the substitution approval had never made it to the Dean's Office and I'd be contacting the person who initially sent it to have it sent again.

But no. It's the usual "I want to believe this, so it is true" method of reasoning. I believe that I got approved for that substitution, so I am going to ignore everything to the contrary! Including, incidentally, DegreeWorks, which is a program all students have access to and are supposed to be using, that shows exactly what classes they've taken, how they're being counted, and what they're still missing.

Five emails and DegreeWorks may all say I'm missing that class, but by god I believe I got that substitution and I will continue to believe it!!!

So yay, I get to talk to him and then to his advisor and the chair of the department. They all do in fact insist the sub approval was sent to us, but ..... WE DON"T HAVE IT**!!!!!! (I won't go into the complete and total fucked-up-edness of that department, which makes it no surprise at all that a thing like this could happen) And apparently they don't have a copy either. Imagine that.

The long and short of it is that if Panic Boy had actually read his five previous emails - read and reacted to them -- this would be totally NOT a big deal. They could just send another approval through. But since Panic Boy ignored all the emails until the deadline had passed, now it's a Big Deal. He either has to be back-graduated to May, which means he doesn't get counted in the graduating student numbers that are so important to the university because funding is involved and money is lost for each student who doesn't get counted, or he has to apply for August graduation and wait till then for his degree.

Well, the end result was we just backgraduated him, since everyone was so insistent that they believed the memo had been sent long ago. And it's honestly a whole lot easier for me to do that than deal with him all over again in August. SIGH. Once again, idiocy is rewarded! And best of all, there are nine more that I haven't heard from at all. So I'm sure in six months when they finally realize they didn't ever get their degree, they will be calling to wail and weep. AAGGHHH.

Back to my initial point. READ YOUR EMAILS, KIDS. Sadly we can't come and hunt each of you down individually on the street and explain to you why you aren't graduating. We are also not equipped to text you. Every office on campus communicates via email, so this is not a rare and exotic event, getting an important email from us. And just because you have a lot of emails and reading is hard, ignoring them is not a very good idea.

Okay. That's it. Rant over.