Degree Petitions

I really hate paperwork. I don't mean writing reports on your work sort of paperwork, even though that's unpleasant. I mean the kind of pointless paperwork that can make our break your life despite all the work you've done. The perfect example of this is a degree petition.

Basically you've been working hard for years--years!!--and suddenly all your hard work comes down to this one little piece of paper. (Ok it's more like three, but whatever). You've done everything you need to do. Taken all the required classes, slaved doing research for your professor, but your entire life plan can be thwarted by this one little piece of paper.

Forget the deadline and you're doomed.

But even if you remember the deadline, even if you fill everything out appropriately, that's no guarantee that nothing will go wrong with this little piece of paper that holds future. Take my undergrad degree petition. I filled it out perfectly, turned it in to the right people in ADVANCE of the deadline, and thought I would be fine.

Then one day, I thought "Even though I did all that perfectly, I should check online for the checkmark to see it did go perfectly." (Because its too difficult for them to send you an email to say everything is fine or something is wrong, you actually have to find the random place online to check for it). So I go to the website, finally find the right path to the place where you check these things and it says "ADVISER SIGNATURE MISSING."

What the crap???? I did everything right! We were told directly by our undergrad adviser that all you do is turn it into her and she'll sign them all in one stack. All of my other friends did the exact same thing and their degree petitions are fine. Somehow its just mine that's messed up. So I had to call the office, find out what happened, and low and behold, it wasn't my fault at all. Somehow the adviser had skipped my petition in the stack. She fixed it, but still, that was a couple of days of sweating on my part. Because of her one little mistake, I might not have graduated on time.

So now that I'm not only trying to graduate, but trying to do it via distance learning, my paperwork stress level has gone up tenfold. I'm worried that somehow instead of being switched to distance learning, they'll accidentally drop my out of school. I'm trying to get a hold of the person in charge of degree petitions to see how being distance learning changes everything, but I can't find her. And of course, on top of all this, I somehow have to actually move to Albuquerque.

AHHHHHHH!

I really want to graduate. I know I've fulfilled all the requirements with the exception of my last semester, which will be in the fall. I just want everything to be approved and it all to work well so I can graduate. Is that too much to ask?

Apparently, yes. Stupid paperwork.