Ohh boy. Well here goes. I won't say the name of the place, but let's just call it "Prison". Seems a little more complimentary than the truth, since prisons give you free room and board.
So to start things off, I entered prison as a film production major in 2006. I bought about 1500 dollars worth of supplies for the first production class I was registered for, in addition to books and supplies for the other classes. Well, on the first day of class the professor tries to boot students to make room for some sophomores. Long story short, there was an "oh by the way, there's a mandatory lab in addition to this 3-hr long class that the registrar didn't know about" -- oh uh... there's a problem, I answered; I have ____ during that time. Without any intent to solve the scheduling problem (which was not mine, but the registrar's), he said "well that frees up a spot" and crosses my name off the class roster. Cool. Okay. I guess I'll just wait around for 4 hours before my next class now, seeing as how I commute from out of town (meanwhile I'm steaming and looking for people to vent toward).
I couldn't get into the class the following semester either, surprise surprise, so by the time I got the class it was a full year later, for the first semester of my sophomore year. Well, I had all the stuff I needed, even if it broke me to have it a year early unnecessarily. I had a great P1 class, and the professor from a year ago warmed up to me and we got along great. Passed with flying colors, got to show the department some of what I have to offer, and received two hard-earned As from the most notoriously strict professor in the department. So then I had to get into Production 2! Whelp, there seems to be a secret waiting list for the class, so I was unable to take it the next semester, and therefor had to wait a whole 'nother year. Now this is where it gets good. Upon completing that second semester of my sophomore year, my friend and I both signed on for P2 for the fall semester. All summer we kept after it. We emailed professors, made sure we were on the list (even if we heard back a month later), etc. So we were pretty excited to take the class together and make more good stuff. By the time the semester rolls around, we try registering: oops! It's all full, apparently. So we email like crazy and stop in, making special trips to campus every day just to meet with people who are never in their office during specified times. We said "guys, we were TOLD we were on the wait list, why can't we take the class?" -- short answer: "nu uh".
We got jerked around like this by the film department all year. Eventually it was the second semester of junior year, and we once again got screwed out of getting into the class (keep in mind this is only P2, and P3 and 4 is one big year-long class. If we don't get P2 before senior year, we cannot take 3 and 4 and graduate on time).
This boiled into this huge catastrophe. I emailed my adviser pleading for help and not once... not ONCE did he ever help. In fact, I never met him (on campus). Never. Want to hear something funny? The ONLY time I ever met the guy? Get this: I was working at Sears and he bought a lawnmower, so I loaded his vehicle for him since I worked warehouse and that was my job. I even introduced myself to him then. We had a friendly chat, then he drove off. At school? Never saw him. The next time I saw him, guess what? I loaded his vehicle again at Sears. Needless to say I was less sociable this time around, and rather pissed off. He sped away without much talk. And I never spoke to the man again, even after the following events:
And SO: we FINALLY got on the wait list for P2 for our second semester of junior year. It was a huge hassle, but we did it. Good, right? Well it gets better.
*drum-roll*
The holiday passes as we prepare for classes to resume. My buddy and I have all sorts of ideas that we want to do in the class. Meanwhile, we caught wind of some secondary filtering system (for the record, the department isn't even supposed to have a waiting list -- they're SUPPOSED to go through the registrar like everyone else). But on top of the wait list, they have... a secret meeting. Yes, a secret meeting. Okay still with me?
So my friend heard about this, and emailed the professor who taught the class. He asked about the meeting, and when it took place. Since we didn't want to lose our seats in the class, we wanted to be sure we attended that meeting, yes? Well. Here's what happened: We got no word back. Multiple emails -- no response. None. We went to see them and they were not in their offices (winter break you know). Eventually the semester started up and....
Yes, we lost our seats in the class. Blood-boiling. Now I'm the maddest I've ever been in my entire life. So we talk to every single person in the department, trying to fix this problem. We show DOCUMENTED emails from the previous year, where we were on the wait list, then documentation asking about the following year, and all this was neatly organized and clearly showed we were being screwed. Hell, I even knew sophomores who got into the class over us! And we were juniors going into senior year who would have NO time to take the required classes.
Now it REALLY gets fun. Has anyone seen Uncle Buck? You know the female principal? Well imagine her, crossed with Michael J Fox's jittery antics.
We make a meeting with the Dean of arts or whatever she was. We sit down in her office. I am steaming and ready to blow. My buddy is just really let down and we both try to e xp lain this all to her. We tell her honestly how we've been jerked around all through this department, and even after earning two As and working on a year-long animation, and a department-produced film for them, I can't get the respect of allowing me into a class I NEED. We were quite honest about our impressions of some of the professors involved, and the Dean takes her glasses off, and rubs her eyes. Then she looks at me (or the wall behind me, for all her eyes could tell) and said "Do you HONESTLY think professors play favorites?!--NO--NO they're there to help you LEARN. They want you to LEARN."
I was about ready to sock her in the face, as my buddy sort of stopped trying to reach her and didn't say much afterward. I sort of let loose a bit and said how absurdly asinine it is to be dicked around this much for a class I need to graduate on time, and how I have no money to stay another semester, and how that's all this is. It's a con to milk a financially-screwed kid out of every penny he doesn't even have, only to give him the cold shoulder when he reaches out for help, and how there's CLEAR favoritism at play when students who specifically ask about secret wait lists and secret meetings do not get the feedback they pay for. The last bit, because she had said "they're not there to babysit you and hunt you down" -- I was like "LADY, WE EMAILED THEM COUNTLESS TIMES and made NUMEROUS attempts to meet with them! It's not about hunting us down, it's about IGNORING us."
This is the greatest part of this entire e xp erience..
Concerning the wait list, she was surprised. She hadn't even known about it. She said the registrar should be the ones in charge of scheduling (gee, no kidding). Yet she KNEW about the meeting... this is where it gets good.
She said to me, with a straight face "How did you not know about the meeting?", to which I replied "...well we DID, but we didn't hear about it through any official announcement, but through friends in the department". Then she says "they posted a flyer in the Media Arts Center" and I laughed in her face. I said "okay seriously, they posted a flyer? A flyer?? Look, with all due respect, when we outright ASK the professors about such things, we DESERVE an answer. It wouldn't be hard, with all they're paid, to email back a time, or date, or anything. I don't e xp ect them to hunt me down, but if my NAME IS ON THE LIST, shouldn't they let those people know when the meeting is???"
She said to me, in return (ROFL!!!!): "It's reciprocal. It can't NOT be reciprocal! It's about being in tune with your surroundings, being aware, and being in tune with your peers"
I just about busted a nut. Here I am with someone of higher authority than the inept tools I've been dribbling with, and she's JUST AS asinine.
I said, "In tune with my surroundings? Tell me, HOW do you e xp ect me to know the details of a secret meeting without being told
even upon inquiry, since I am a commuter and live off campus, and since I do not HAVE any classes in the Media Arts Center --
because I was booted from the only one I had in there -- and you e xp ect me to see a flyer posted in some remote corner of a building I do not frequent???" and then I pointed to my friend and said "and HE'S my peer, and we BOTH got screwed despite both knowing about this meeting!"
We walked out of that office that day very annoyed, bitter, discouraged, and tired.
Then, in order to salvage anything of my major, I had to change it.
I individualized it, combining my mostly-film major classes with my abundance of art classes, mixed some English courses in there for good measure, and came up with something workable. Senior year, I met with the dean of students (not the other useless one, but the REAL one) and got her to approve sixteen credits of Independent Study (four over the limit), with eight alone within the film department (two over the six-limit max). Since the film courses were worth twice the credits of a normal course, I needed to make up my loss. And so I did. And it all got extremely technical. And I think once this Dean got involved, it was pretty easy sailing for me to finish out (thank Christ, or so help me I'd have killed someone). I sort of severely bent some rules to graduate on time, but you know what? They owed me a lot more. I deserved something after being denied my true major of choice, and paying so much money for nothing but a bad e xp erience and wasted time.
In short, it's behind me now. A lot of crap. and not much worth remembering. And that's why I'll always hate "school" systems for the rest of my life. Like my dad always said, College and Government are the only places where the customer is always wrong. Boy, I sure learned that truth hard.
They managed to eff all that up in three semesters?! Jebus!
:th