Red Tape
I have to say: I am impressed with the University of Houston. I have not attended a class there since 2008, and in just three years, the amount of bullshit one has to cut through to get anywhere has grown exponentially.
For those of you who are new to the blog: I attended UH from 2006- December 2008, leaving two foreign language credit hours short of a Creative Writing degree solely because my mother had a heart attack at the beginning of 2009 and I wanted to be able to be around for her while she adjusted to that life. She had three more hospital visits that year for various maladies, and I did what I could to hold the household together and help take care of my sister for her.
I had finally deemed myself ready to finish in 2010 — I scheduled an appointment with an academic advisor to talk about finishing up in the summer. They told me that because of the year I’d been off, I would be back up to four semesters of foreign language as I had apparently lost all knowledge of anything I had learned in a year. Of course, this doesn’t apply to any of my other courses, because the rule was ill-conceived, but whatever: this post will be whiny enough without turning every injustice into a rallying point. I would simply attempt to test up on the requirements.
In April of that year, my father passed away. I needed to go AWOL for a few months and take care of all his dealings, paperwork, and so forth. I didn’t get a chance to really take a crack at studying for anything, so I just put it off until I thought I had a chance to do that. A couple of real jobs and another parent death later, here I am in October trying to get back to school and get the piece of paper that I have (mostly) earned.
-I called the counselor’s office to ask for an appointment to talk to them in September, this time they said that because of recent changes, they needed me to re-apply. To go back to a school I already had been at and had done fairly well at. (I can’t remember exactly what I had, but off the top of my head, I believe I carried a ~ 3.5 GPA.)
-I finally finagled the free time to apply last Saturday, and I called over on Tuesday to try to set up an appointment. They said to call back on Friday, because with the new rules in place they have apparently lost the ability to schedule things more than a week in advance.
-Finally, when I called Friday, I was informed that not only do I have to apply to see an advisor, I would also need to be accepted and go to orientation before I could see one. Even though, you know, I’ve been to orientation before.
I don’t really see what this is accomplishing for them. I’m going to do my best to get myself caught up on Spanish in the next two months (I might even try my hand at it in a few entries here or there), but it sure would be helpful to go in and find out exactly what I need to try to take and what I need to be thinking about with some advance notice.
Or we could just keep moving the goalposts until it’s a week before I start. Next time I call in, I’ll probably be classified as an illegal alien. Or told that I can’t get an appointment unless I am one. Whatever it takes to make this process more irritating.
(#whitewhine)
