red tape.

today, i'd like to talk about bureaucracy.

the kind of bureaucracy that allows editorial coordinators to turn tiny tyrant, sending out an email to everyone who (GASP!) hasn't taken the time, inbetween changing ellipses to ... to . . .  in a 200 page document and TEACHING THE FUTURE LEADERS OF OUR PLANET, to insert a dissertation title into the special secret editorial electronic system that their name would be REMOVED FROM THE GRADUATION PROGRAM if they didn't respond to the email within an hour because i had been sent REPEATED messages to do so.

i got the email two hours after it was sent.

rather than get panicked, i just got mad.  here's what i sent:

I only received this message. Yes, it was on the checklists, but I was not aware that there was an immediate deadline for the title.  I have entered it, though it is more than an hour after you sent your message. I am graduating this term, and have met every deadline thus far. It seems monumentally unfair to me that because I didn't get my email (because I was teaching a class here) within your hour timeframe that my name should be removed from the program.

 

Please advise as to what will happen from here.

 

twenty minutes after this email, rather than send me a reply, another email was sent out to the list of mighty slackers like me (ahem.) who had yet to comply.  instead of throwing down the hammer with an hour deadline, it stated that everyone needed to reply TODAY.

(much more reasonable but still annoying as sin.)

the last thing i need in my life right now, with moving and the dissertation editorial nonsense and teaching and just life, is a tyrannical bureaucracy cramping my style.  please. give me a break.

my goal now is just to get this stupid thing done and passed off as soon as humanly possible. i really just want to be done.

it figures that, after all the effort and stress, the dissertation process would end with as much annoyance as possible.

perhaps it's their gentle way of kicking us out the door and not making us want to look back fondly.  it works.

ps--i realized that my name never got changed in the collegetown u system, even though i thought it had been.  now i think i might graduate as teachergirl maidenname rather than teachergirl maidenname marriedname.  this makes me sad, sort of.  i'm going to try to get it changed in time, but we'll see.  i might be able to have them announce the right name, but the program will probably have the maidenname.  i definitely will demand that my correct name be on my diploma.  oh dear.  i'll be so sad if it's not.

gah.  more bureaucracy. i'm so over it!