The important question is, "If Dianna's head is still aching and work is plagued by technical difficulties, why is she having such a bloody wonderful day?"
The answer is that she's holding in her hands everything she needs to be back in school in either August or January (minus the current General Catalog and Schedule of Classes) and she's just discovered she's eligible for readmission after all.
I have a stack of paperwork 1/8" thick: readmission paperwork, change of college paperwork, declaration of major paperwork, major application paperwork, program planning paperwork, required classes lists, checklists, guidelines, you name it. It's all here along with instructions telling me who needs it when, and I have until June to put it all together.
Best of all, the irony that's had me beating myself over the head for the past year has just evaporated in the face of more careful reading. The AP classes I was shunted into in high school despite not wanting to be in them will not, after all, count against me in my effort to get readmitted to study what I'm actually interested in. The fact that I took my time in deciding where to go after leaving architecture won't actually mean that I can't get out of architecture at all. In other words, credits earned during high school don't count against the 90-unit maximum for petitioning to change colleges. Praise Hallelujah thingy!
I can't let the office manager see me with this stuff. She starts to sound panicky when I talk about leaving and going back to school. I'll have to sit her down and assure her unequivocally that I'm not going anywhere for seven to twelve months, and then bring up the subject of my ceasing to be here. Maybe I'll give her a cookie first to make her feel better. Maybe I need one myself, because all this red tape makes me so nervous I'm bouncing off the walls. School!
Posted by dianna at January 25, 2005 11:27 AMi realize that the cookies weren't the most important element of this post, but i must know who on earth makes double chocolate coffee toffee cookies which are evidently vegan and capable of inducing a 3-day headache. must have.
and if you're going back to school (yay!) you might as well give in now and get back on that caffeine train. too bad wall berlin no longer exists to provide hammerheads. remember those? yowza.
Posted by: katie at January 25, 2005 12:48 PMOh Christ, yes, I remember Hammerheads. The worst thing about them was that because they were cold, you could just gulp them down in seconds flat instead of taking your time and sipping them slowly. I think I gave myself a caffeine seizure that way once.
The cookie company is called Organica. They also make cranberry chocolate chip oatmeal, gingered something or other nut, lemon something else thingy, and everything else under the sun. I found them at Whole Foods in the prepackaged cookies and crackers aisle. Yowza indeed. They're obscene and divine.
Posted by: Dianna at January 25, 2005 01:06 PMcongrats on getting to go back to school! that's great! what school are you changing to though? not still berkeley? oh, does berkeley just get all pretentious and say that it has different "colleges" within it? well then, what are you changing to from architecture? i am all full of questions.
Posted by: michele at January 25, 2005 02:16 PMYou got it. Berkeley calls its divisions colleges. Environmental Design is the one that contains architecture, and Letters & Sciences is the one that contains anthropology. Anthropology is what I'm switching to (archaeology is my subdiscipline), and a perfect stranger told me last week that "that's interesting, but it's not like you can make a career out of it." Sigh.
Posted by: Dianna at January 25, 2005 02:59 PMyou can too make a career out of it. you can dig up dinosaur shaped chick'n from the earth after all. there's a big market in those. kids l(heart)ve them.
Posted by: michele at January 26, 2005 09:10 AMI don't think I'm actually planning on making a career out of it. My plan right now is to go back to school for a Master's in Library Science and be a librarian. Mmmm. Librarian.
Still, every time someone says I can't make a career out of archaeology I want to scrap that plan and spend my life in New Mexico digging up ancient tent posts just to show them. Psst -- archaeologists don't deal with dinosaurs except by accident. Dinosaurs are a paleontology problem.
Posted by: Dianna at January 26, 2005 09:21 AMChick'n is a paleontology problem also.
I need to figure out how to put my hair up in a bun.
Posted by: Dianna at January 26, 2005 10:00 AMI find Letters & Sciences people to be very helpful and tolerant about (multiple) readmisisons and major changes. The idea of different "colleges" at Cal only really makes sense for admissions purposes, so as to manage the number of propsective engineers admitted, and make sure there are architects and environmental scientists. I'm still not sure why there's a separate College of Chemistry.
It's usually only hard to transfer out of Engineering. Or the College of Natural Resources, which is perceived as being easier to get into than the other colleges. College of Letters & Sciences really should just be labeled Miscellaneous.
I can show you where they keep dinosaur bones at Berkeley, if you want. You can probably get chick'n at the seven-story, football field sized mega-dining hall by Unit 2.
Posted by: sean at January 26, 2005 10:30 AMDamnit, people! I don't want dinosaur bones! I deal only with primates!
That's really good to hear, Sean. Not about the dinosaur bones, I mean about L&S being tolerant of readmissions and whatnot. I was getting pretty pessimistic for a while about the massive beauracracy with its rules about how I can't meet with a L&S adviser to discuss transferring to L&S because I'm not in L&S yet. Joseph Heller would be proud of it, but I will triumph yet. And the Anthropology department is in Kroeber, with its impressive collection of no dinosaurs whatsoever.
Posted by: Dianna at January 26, 2005 11:18 AMnow you are again just cool enough for school. welcome to the school club!
so you collect dinosaur figurines and stuff? i had no idea. i have one (thousand) great little green rubber dinosaur(s) i'm gonna give you, and i bet i can find some other stuff, like a dinosaur hat and sweatshirt and some of sean's dinosaur stories...
Posted by: didofoot at January 26, 2005 01:01 PMi have fond memories of the balderdash entry for the movie title, 'that sinking feeling', about the guy on the titanic with the dinosaur shaped sponges which magically grow when placed in water, trying to tread water while clutching one in each hand so they didn't get wet.
Posted by: michele at January 26, 2005 01:10 PMahh, you deal only with primates? me too. this is why i don't get anthropology/archaeology not being part of the humanities.
i mean, ok, i get anthro being a social science. but the primates that you'd dig up are long dead, so how social can they be?
zombie primates? *shiver*
Posted by: katie at January 26, 2005 01:11 PM