tick. tick. tick. tick. tick. tick. ……AAGGHHH

That ticking up there is time. And here I am, watching it crawl along and being bored out of my mind. Because the big thing I have to do, the ONLY big thing I have to do, before being set free for my nice looooong Christmas Break, is one last clearance of the graduating seniors. Or, rather, the seniors who are hoping to graduate but may or may not be actually graduating. But they walked in the ceremony Sunday! So that means they graduated!!! 

Like the one who failed all his classes last spring, was already teetering on the brink of not having a 2.0 in his major for this semester (a C, for godsake—- if you can’t even manage a C average in your major, perhaps you need to, oh, I don’t know……CHANGE MAJORS??!!??) and emails my boss, the ass’t dean, saying…. and hey, I’m going to just quote here:

 I am trying to get my situation figured out for graduation, 4 out of my 6 classes I think I will be passing in. The other 2 due to my professors strict grading I will not. My Advisor told me I need at least 4 C+ and 1 B in order to meet graduation requirements. Since I did not get Medical Withdrawal last semester, those 6 F’s are negatively impacting my graduation and might prevent from graduation. Is there anything I can do to change this?

Wow, who knew that six F’s in your senior year might "negatively impact" your graduation prospects? Especially when you needed to not only avoid failing this semester, but make the equivalent of four C+s and a B? And of course it is in NO way his fault that he’s failing some classes this semester – it’s his mean old professors and their unfair strict grading! The medical withdrawal was denied in spring because he had bronchitis and didn’t ask for a withdrawal until the end of the semester. After he figured out he was failing all his classes, obviously.  

Guess what he’s majoring in? Journalism! I’m sure that his apparent inability to write an email using proper grammar and coherent sentences has nothing at all to do with this stunning lack of success in his major.

So Ass’t Dean emails him back and says that he actually will need to fulfill all the requirements before he is allowed to graduate. (Oh, the cruelty!!!)

And the student emails back and says, "So if I walk {in the ceremony} without meeting requirements, I can still get my diploma?"  

AAAAGGHHHH!!!!!!! Oh, why the hell not!!! You failed six classes, you didn’t come anywhere near the (not very stringent) minimum GPA requirement for your major, but you’ve been here five years already and your parents are tired of paying exorbitant tuition fees for you to fail classes, so sure. SURE, here’s your diploma, and good luck with that Real World!

Why, yes, I AM ready for the break. 

And I’m posting this hours and hours later, having been rudely interrupted by finding that final grades were at last available to us, so I had to round up Miss Artsy and tackle the clearances. Which lasted the rest of the day, gave us both a headache, and STILL are not finished. Tomorrow we finish the clearances, email the Looooser Letters, and I am out of there. Till next year! Baker B and I are planning our now-traditional Christmas In Charleston this weekend, and then we’ll go see his family on the way back next week. I may even find time to catch up on OD, bizarre as that would be.