Dear Ms Woolsey,
Your request for a Change of College and Re-admission to the College
of Letters and Science has been approved.
Two -- three? -- years ago, I walked out of an information session on changing colleges, locked myself in a bathroom stall in Campbell Hall, and sat staring at the wall and shaking for ten minutes because I'd just seen the rest of my education go flying out the window. I had too many units and too low a GPA, I'd learned, to change colleges so I could declare anthropology as my major and finish my degree. I sure as fuck wasn't going to be able to graduate as an architecture major. I'd missed the change-of-college deadline for the current semester anyway, and every semester thereafter that I took classes I'd be making myself less eligible. That was the reason I dropped out the next semester -- not my sudden loss of family funding, and not my terminal academic burnout, although those were good short answers to give people who asked why I wasn't in school.
I've been variously depressed, apathetic, anxious, avoidant, terrified, and panicked about this since spring 2003, but it's the last month that's really been killing me. My ability to graduate has been squished into a thin stack of papers on someone's desk in the College of Letters & Sciences advising office, completely out of my hands. If the owner of that desk isn't too tired and cranky upon reading my essay, and decides to overlook my GPA and let me come within a hairsbreadth of too many units, then it's me in a funny square hat in a year's time. And if not? I've had nightmares about if-not.
Dear Ms Woolsey,
Your request for a Change of College and Re-admission to the College
of Letters and Science has been approved.
Dear College of Letters & Sciences,
I love you.
Posted by dianna at October 26, 2005 11:10 PMCongratulations!
Is this it? The final step? The last of the bureaucratic hurdles?
In any case, how will you be celebrating the news?
Posted by: Zach S. at October 27, 2005 07:00 AMPretty much, yeah. I still need to wait for them to get word out to the registrar's office and the financial aid office (so I can actually, you know, sign up for classes and pay for them), but that's in their role as paper-pushers, not as the omnipotent lords of all fate and arbiters of puny re-entry requests. Technically I suppose it's still a bureaucratic hurdle, but it's not the kind where someone has the option to just tell me no.
My preliminary celebration last night involved eating Ethiopian food, watching Napoleon Dynamite, and jumping up and down a lot and saying "eeeeeee". The food (Blue Nile) wasn't quite as delicious as I'd remembered it, and the movie wasn't quite what I was expecting, but the "eeeeeee" was pretty damn good.
Posted by: Dianna at October 27, 2005 08:59 AMcongratulations! that's awesome. i remember how exciting it was to get readmitted for my lit degree, and realizing i would finally be studying something i both liked and was good at. then, a year later, when i was finally allowed to take an actual lit class after all my prereqs were completed, it was exciting all over again. fucking state. (from you to me in 3.5 sentences.)
Posted by: didofoot at October 27, 2005 09:09 AMYou're allowed. You went back to school too and I don't even think I properly congratulated you on it. See, back to me again.
Posted by: Dianna at October 27, 2005 10:47 AMDude, congratulations! Though in reality you are too cool for school, I am glad to hear that in this case the school considers you cool enough for it.
You're starting back next semester, right? Aiieee! This means I can start trying to suck you into all the quibbles about postmodern anthropology and postcolonialism that I've been sitting on. (To me in 5 sentences; I clearly don't have the hang of the game.)
Congratulations. You're never too old to go back and finish school, or so I hear.
Posted by: sean at October 27, 2005 12:15 PMSo when you return, are you considering going back to the library?
Posted by: Zach S. at October 27, 2005 12:23 PMI'm not only considering it, I'm planning on it. I emailed Willyce a few weeks ago to let her know I'm coming back, and to ask if she'd mind holding an SLE position for me. I figure -- and she seems to agree -- I'll just be a regular SLE peon unless and until a clerk position happens to open up.
Now that you mention it, I should email her and let her know that my application went through and I'm definitely coming back.
Do you know how much I'm looking forward to dealing with books, which don't talk, instead of people, which do?
Posted by: Dianna at October 27, 2005 03:39 PMAwesome! It wouldn't surprise me if a position did open up; I seem to recall that the person we hired to replace me was a senior and would be graduating soon.
Oh! I'm not sure if he'll still be there, but when I left Sky's younger brother was working as an SLE. And I understand Sky himself is back in school taking classes, though not working at the library.
And I would imagine, since you asked the question, that the answer is "Quite a bit."
Posted by: Zach S. at October 27, 2005 03:48 PMYES. LOTS.
Sky! I miss Sky. He and I attempted to email each other for something like a year, with only about four emails going back and forth because each time the enormity of responding to "what have you been doing in the incredibly long time since I saw you last?" was just too much to handle and we'd wind up forgetting about the emails and never responding. I should re-attempt to communicate with him.
No. Should nothing. I'm feeling pro-active today and thus I have already emailed him! Thank you for the inspiration.
Posted by: Dianna at October 27, 2005 04:57 PMyey for school! i miss school. also working with books. also the sky. but not sky, because i don't know him.
Posted by: michele at October 27, 2005 05:02 PMYou would miss Sky if you knew him, or rather, if you had known him at some point but not seen him lately. He's a good one. Books, also, are good.
Posted by: Dianna at October 27, 2005 05:21 PM