nojomo#3 – the Grudge Tale

Okay, today I’m no longer seething with fury and I’m also already sick of NoJoMo because it’s making me work, AND it’s making me not read everyone else because I don’t have time to work and to read. Oh and I keep thinking I can do an entry at Real Work because I thought we’d be kind of slow again by now…. hey, we’ve got a stack of audits ten miles high that have to be done, and Mr. Organized gets to go to SEATTLE for all of next week so we’ll be even further behind since he’s the fast one. He’s going to Big Meetings about the new Degree Audit system. I am trying not to be jealous. They have a very full schedule with little time for sightseeing and fun. But. STILL. WAAHH!!!! 

And using my poor computer makes me sad because everything is in shades of red and blue, and photos look kind of like negatives now. But I am very grateful that it still works, and I can keep using it until I decide what I am going to do about getting a new one. Which is hard, because every time I start looking at computers I immediately go into Information Overload and my brain shrieks crazily and shuts down. I went to Staples just to look at what they had today, and the only thing I came away with is the 14 inch monitor looks big enough (I think my current one is 15) and the Dell InspironR is okay looking but a little plain and the Toshibas are outwardly a lot fancier and shinier, and what the hell is an Acer?!? It sounds like one of those really cheap off-brand TVs, but there was another woman looking at them too and she decided to buy one after the 12 year old salesguy looked them up on his smartphone for her. 

AAGGHH. I’m sure I’ll order one from Dell — we have gotten all our computers from Dell for years, and get a pretty good State Employee discount — but I want to really research it and get exactly what I need. Of course, I had this same problem last time, before I ordered this one, and it was grueling and traumatic and full of Information Overload Brain Shriek moments, but I have been very happy with this laptop. Except for the kind of annoying touchpad – that’s the only complaint I’ve ever had about it. So I doubt I’ll go too far wrong no matter what I get. I did have a moment yesterday when I thought, HEY! I keep hearing cool stuff about MacBook Airs – I wonder how much a MacBook Air would be?!? 

Yikes. Let’s just say I won’t be getting a MacBook Air. 

ANYHOW. Back to my real topic for the day. The Grudge Tale. Why Edna was nail-spitting mad all day long. (And I will warn that The Grudge Tale is very very long and I will not hold even more grudges against anyone who wants to just skip over all this.)

I will try to be as concise as possible. Which of course probably means I will not be concise at all. It involves a pea-brained advisor who I already knew was, ummmm, odd. And the new General Education program, which has taken the place of the old Core program. Basically, trying to be concise, that’s just the 40-some hours of coursework that students have to have outside their majors — the basic stuff, like Math and English and History and PE. It’s been pretty much the same requirements since I was in college- a Science sequence, two semesters of English, a Math, two hours of PE, two semesters of History, two Social Science courses outside History, and four Humanities courses – one literature, one Fine Arts, one third area, one "any area". (I used to think THAT was confusing!! Hahahahaha!) But several years ago somebody decided we should revamp the Core. Revamp it, change everything, make it baffling and nonsensical and impossible for anyone to understand, and oh, yeah, be sure it’s as complicated as it can possibly be! Since the worst parts of the new Gen Ed (as it’s now called) have nothing to do with my Grudge Tale, I will not attempt to explain the insanity. Because that would take all night. We’ll just say that trying to meet the requirements of the new Gen Ed is like trying to solve a really really crazy logic puzzle. But without the logic. And it has caused mass confusion and resulted in lots of students taking classes they can’t actually use. 

BUT. That is a completely different whiny story, so I’ll try getting to the point of my current whiny story instead of going on and on about that. Gen Ed also now requires two classes in each major that are designated as writing intensive courses. One Junior Writing in the Discipline course, and one Capstone course, taken in the senior year. Each major department had to pick specific WID and CAP courses for their majors. So these courses are kind of odd because they are specific to each major, but they are also required as part of Gen Ed. (I’ll note right here that there has been quite the power struggle with this whole Gen Ed thing. Gen Ed kind of tried to take over and become Ruler Over All Majors, which was, ummmm, kind of nuts.)

The really key part of this story is that although these WID and CAP courses are specific to the majors, Gen Ed still has control over them in that they have to approve anything that the departments want to substitute for those courses. So if a student is taking a class that is NOT the specific, already designated WID class and the department agrees it’s a good substitution, they still have to go through Gen Ed for approval. And Gen Ed has made it clear they do NOT like to do substitutions. (Power struggle!!!)  

One of our departments makes tons of substitutions for their students. TONS. We are always getting emails from advisors, subbing one course for another. This department also has somehow managed to have two programs in which there are no CAP or WID classes designated. Since Gen Ed started being required for students who enrolled in fall of 2009 and everyone who was earlier gets to stay on the old Core, this has not been a problem. Until now. This semester, there are six students who are in these two programs and are trying to graduate in December. One of these programs never designated either the WID or the CAP class, and, the other designated a CAP but no WID, and for the CAP they let a bunch of students take a totally different class than they designated and never got it approved by King Gen Ed, Wanna Be Ruler Of All. 

SO. Now it’s a big problem because these six students have received YOU’RE NOT GRADUATING!!! letters because they have not taken the WID and/or CAP class. Although they took the classes their department TOLD them would count. But the department never got them approved. And I’ll note right here that Mr. Organized has been emailing the chair and coordinators of these two programs for THREE YEARS telling them they better get approval or their students were going to hit this big brick wall when they try to graduate. 

Well, DUH. 

SO. Yesterday Mr. Idiot Advisor called me and told me he wanted to make substitutions for his students who had gotten the YOU’RE NOT GRADUATING!! letters. He wanted to count other classes that Gen Ed approved last year and he didn’t know why I was saying they weren’t approved because they were approved and he remembered them being approved. I said, "ummmm… we don’t have anything from Gen Ed approving them, but I will email the Gen Ed coordinator and ask her if they were approved. If theyweren’t, though, you have to request approval from them. From Gen Ed. From the Gen Ed office. Not from us. From Gen Ed."

He grumbled and bitched and wanted to know why we wouldn’t just approve it ourselves (well, because we are NOT GEN ED, and … POWER STRUGGLE!!!) and said he didn’t understand why this was such a big deal and wahhhh waahhh wahhhh and I told him I’d have my boss call him back if he wanted since I don’t actually work with the Gen Ed approvals — Mr. Organized and my boss do. And they could perhaps explain it in terms that his dumb ass can understand. No, no, I didn’t say THAT. Although I sure wanted to.

Please note that this has gone on for THREE YEARS and is not something that has suddenly appeared out of the clear blue sky. He KNEW about this, all along. He just didn’t want to take care of it himself by going through the proper channels. The Gen Ed channels. The channels which I agree are stupid and idiotic but are still The Channels and we are not able to bypass them. 

SO he talks to my boss. And he tells my boss that every time he asks me about this he gets the runaround. (Because in many MANY prior conversations I’ve told him we can’t approve these things, Gen Ed has to approve them, and I’ve sent him Gen Ed’s instructions for getting approvals about fifteen times.). And then he sends me an email telling me he wants me to approve these classes (that, in case anyone has possibly managed to miss this, I CAN NOT APPROVE) and when I email him back and tell him (for the bazillionth time)  that unfortunately I don’t have that power nor does anyone in our office and he really really REALLY has to go through Gen Ed, and the approvals the prior Gen Ed director (henceforth known as "C") made were JUST for one student and not for everyone…. then he emails me back and tells me to please stop making this more difficult than it has to be. And says, "There are too many people involved in this! And who is C???" 

Okay. SO the bottom line is pretty much that he wants to substitute these classes, he does not want to go through the whole approval process for these classes, (which he has known about for THREE YEARS) and he wants me to just go ahead and accept them. When it is totally not up to me to accept them because they are under the jurisdiction of a completely different department. Which incidentally had never approved what he insisted they had approved — they did it for one student and did it grudgingly for that one. Mr. Organized had that email and forwarded to me, after blowing a gasket himself on my behalf. And he doesn’t know who the director of Gen Ed is despite having gotten emails from her for the past three years ABOUT Gen Ed. But I am the one being difficult!!! 

AAGGGHHH. I’ll also just note that while all this was going on, the assistant chair of that department was busily writing to Gen Ed requesting subs for both programs, nice detailed complete requests full of all  the information that Gen Ed wants to receive, and I’d been exchanging emails with her too, giving her details about these students and what exactly they’d taken already. So, yeah, it WAS actually being taken care of by someone ELSE. Who did not appear to find me at all difficult. I’ve known her for ages, and have always liked her, and I also blind copied her on my latest reply to the "Stop being so difficult!!" email since I’d copied her on the previous ones (because she was already working on all this and I thought she needed to know what Crazy Advisor was doing and that he needed to know what SHE was doing) but when he told me I was being difficult he only copied my boss, and not his. How odd. 

As a sideline, my boss was quite shocked by all this. And was highly amused by the "Who is C??" comment. He went around the rest of the day wondering who everyone in our office was.  

The long and short of it (and boy has this become the long of it) is that the Gen Ed advisor responded with amazing speed to the Ass’t Chair’s email, accepting all the substitutions, and now the students who are trying to graduate are good to go. So, yeah, it’s all taken care of. By Ass’t Chair, while Insane Advisor was busy spinning in circles trying to avoid going through the necessary channels and calling me difficult and saying I gave him the runaround because I wouldn’t  ignore the procedures right along with him, although my ignoring Gen Ed and approving things I can’t approve could, oh, result in me GETTING FIRED. 

Oh, yeah, I’m not mad anymore. I’m not still seething, not at all! And I certainly would never ever hold a grudge against some poor fizz-brained advisor who is bound to need my help again in the not-distant-at-all future. I’m not keeping tabs. Although I’ll say if you got to this point, you certainly get a gold star.