Signatures [epic-length post]

[kyrasantae]

[Most of the dialogue has been paraphrased/rephrased. I don't have a perfect memory, you know.]


Part 1. The Dean's Office

I'm just afraid they'll go, "Mitä helvettiä!?" "What the hell?" and deny me... —Me

I went to the Dean of Engineering's office today to get my study abroad permission form signed. I was very nervous about it because of the whole very very sketchy situation I'm in regarding my registration status in the Faculty, and really actually was quite scared. I remember Dr. P being ... not the nicest person the last time I saw him two years ago. Bureaucrat.

The moment I walk into the office and sit down I take out my form and politely say that I'm interested in going abroad for the summer and would you please consider giving me permission even though I'm on my way out to Science. In return:

"You've pulled a trick on us. You're not taking the courses you're supposed to." Then he launches into a lecture on how I'm on academic warning and I'm supposed to have cleared academic warning by taking the Engineering course plan for the Fall term, and "yeah I guess it's not explicit enough in the letter I sent you informing you of your status and I'm going to change that letter this year because too many people are taking advantage of it and this has got to stop and you should have been required to withdraw at the end of last term because you didn't do what you were supposed to do but we are fixing this letter this year."

I explained that the chair of the MatE department gave me the nod to take science courses, and even signed off my chemistry courses last term as technical electives.

"But you didn't get his permission to take all that other stuff. And you have the audacity to ask me to let you go on exchange!? I... can't possibly let you do this. You don't even have the 3.3 we require. Can't you go next year, once you're in Science?"

I said that this was a summer program and the GPA requirement is different (there is no engineering-specific GPA requirement for summer programs. In this case it's the same as for everyone else, 2.7 in the last completed term). Also, I told him that believe I have enough credits to graduate in Science next year, so I won't have another chance to go on this trip.

He looked at my transcripts doubtfully.

I explained that I understood that it was causing him a lot of frustration but it was the way I interpreted the letter. I said that it seems unreasonable for someone who clearly intends to transfer out of Engineering into a more suitable field should be trapped doing something they don't want to do, in the name of proving themselves worthy of being in Engineering, where they don't want to be.

I showed him the form, which has a line that says that they can approve me for credit to be transferred to another faculty upon return. I said that "to be honest, credit transfer doesn't matter to me; I likely won't get any."

"Shouldn't you be taking this to Science, if you're going to be going there anyway?"

"It's how the form works - they'd send me right back here."

"Look, you even write down you're in 'materials engineering' on your form."

"What can I do? That's what I am in the university's records."

"You're not even supposed to be here. You cannot deny that you exploited this loophole and deliberately pulled this trick on us. You're getting a bye now... but I won't do that anymore."

[More exchange on the 'deliberate tricks' and 'required to withdraw' thing, and well ... actually, everything. At this point he's seriously guilt-tripping me, I think.]

"I sincerely apologize for my mistake, then, but does it say explicitly anywhere in your letter or in the course calendar that I have to clear my status by taking Engineering classes? If it doesn't then you can't reasonably expect that people aren't going to read it that way, and you've told me yourself that I'm not the only one who's 'pulled this trick' on you." I repeated the part about unreasonable-to-keep-people-in-who-want-out in a slightly different way.

He took out his pen and extremely reluctantly signed my form. "I should have corrected this oversight last year."

"And I hope that your revised letter will prevent such mistakes in the future."

I have no idea how I managed to keep myself calm during this. If my parents were watching, I think they would have been very proud of me.

P.S. The dialogue in this part is pretty awesome to retell in Chinese.

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Part 2. The Second Signature

"They sometimes forget the human side." —H.G.

My next task was to get an appropriate head of the MatE department to sign below the above signature. I knew right away that this signature would be much easier to acquire, because the person I need to get it from is familiar with my situation and has always been very sympathetic to it. Though I was somewhat comforted by this thought, I still felt quite indignant, regardless.

I popped into the Chem/MatE office. The office assistant at the desk there, H.G., knows me by sight and we get along well anyway, so I told her about my form, that I was a little nervous about it because of what had happened before, and asked her who was responsible for signing them in this department. It was either Dr. H or Dr. L, as I suspected, but Dr. L was out teaching a class at the time. I told her that I would prefer to talk to Dr. L because he knows my situation and would be less difficult than Dr. H (who doesn't know me nearly as well).

When I came back later, it was just after the office lunch break so there were a number of students standing outside the locked office door. Another of the students had a similar form as my own, but it is safe to say that he had had much less trouble in the Dean's office - he already had a nice paper with an Engineering faculty letterhead with the words "Letter of Permission" in bold-face font at the top (there is a slightly different procedure for full-term study exchanges). When H.G. came back, us students all flooded into the office. Dr. L waved me into his office immediately when he returned. I suppose H.G. had informed him about my wanting to see him.

I began this talk in a similar manner as the first one, then I told Dr. L briefly about the situation I encountered at the other office. He reviewed my file and I pointed out the ambiguity on the letter. There's a part on the letter that says that the courses that are taken while on academic warning "must be approved by the department." I had done this. I still have the paper on which Dr. L gave his permission for me to register in the two chemistry courses I took last term (and he has the photocopy of it in the file). It's dated on my birthday, after I had received all of my grades and knew I didn't make the cut into Science.

"How did you do this Fall term?" Dr. L's copy of my file doesn't have my grades from last term on it, so I showed him the copy of my official transcript I happened to have on me. "Looks good," he said. "I don't see why you shouldn't be allowed to go. That policy doesn't make sense ... People should be allowed to do what they want to do."

He asked me to confirm that I was still applying to transfer to science and I said that I definitely was; there's no way I'm going back to doing this stuff I don't want to do and clearly don't do well in.

Dr. L signed my form without even looking at the copies of the course descriptions stapled behind it. I would have told him that I'd probably only get 3 credits from them, tops, anyway. If I understand correctly, one actually doesn't even need to fill out the part with course descriptions if s/he is not trying to get transfer credit from courses taken abroad.

"Have fun in Finland."

As I left, he went to take in the other student with the same form and the letter (but going to Germany).

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Part 3. Statements

"想害死啲學生咩!" ("Do they want to make students suffer?!") —My mom, after my Chinese retelling of Part 1

I know which line in the letter was ambiguous. It was that "must be approved by the department" line. Dr. P's fix can be very simple: replace that line with "must be in the course sequence approved by the department." "Course sequence" indicates precisely what it is, and the definite article "the" indicates precisely that one single sequence that the department has approved, i.e. the one in the calendar.

One does not admit making a mistake but pin the responsibility for the effects of that mistake on someone else - and accusing them of malice, of "playing the system."

But I think the greater issue here is the intention of that policy. The only rationale I can currently think of is to prevent students who actually suck at engineering end up coming out with a half-baked engineering degree via taking a carefully tailored mixture of artsy/sciency terms in which they rock, and engineering terms in which they get pwned.

Otherwise it seems that students like myself, who genuinely realize that they're not getting anywhere in engineering, get severely short-changed in terms of opportunities to "get out" compared to those in other undergraduate programs. It could be because engineering is an undergrad professional program which means that it must hold itself to higher standards and have a relatively rigid course structure; I would not be surprised if, for example, nursing was similar.

Let us assume that a science student is failing at science and wants to switch to arts. Although he is also on academic warning, he would be allowed to take arts courses toward his arts degree to clear the status, provided he still has space to do so in his program, for the following reason: Since he is failing at science, he is almost certain to be already in the general program, which allows up to 48 credits in arts (compare to 6 credits in arts in engineering). [The exceptional case I could think of would be someone in honours or specialization bombing to the academic warning level without experiencing a slow decline of grades as I did, therefore not having the opportunity to transfer into the general program at all.]

Similarly, there is no restriction as to how many science courses an arts student may complete (minimum 6), as long as he fulfills the arts requirements for the BA program.

In any case, I think that the Dean's office probably has less work to do to transfer a student away to another faculty (mostly a matter of registration and handing over the files) than to kick someone out of school (having to put the black mark on the file and securing it away from active files, and then if the student decides to return to the same faculty after their year off, to dig out the file again and redo the registration in light of any program changes that may have occurred in the intervening year). It also does far less harm to the student to let him/her express his/her strengths, demonstrating a good likelihood of success in their desired new program.

It is in the interest of neither party to essentially force the student to sink to the level of being asked to withdraw from school. It's more work for the bureaucracy, it's a black mark on the student's record which affects his ability to get education elsewhere, and it is unjust - especially when the student is a capable, but a misplaced one.

The trouble with bureaucracy is that all too often the high-ups get hung up on following the SOP [standard operating protocol]. They don't need to make time to listen to our long-winded stories, but they should know to detect the difference between "I want to get out of here" and "I have no study skills" - and trust that we, as ourselves, know where our strengths are and where we ought to be, given those strengths.

Comments

[r-p-m.livejournal.com]

Wowwww. That's a pretty harsh meeting. I had a similar meeting with a prof about 3 years ago, almost to the day, though it was about something a bit different -- he'd taught me before and didn't think I was up to being in another class he was teaching, in a new term. I proved him wrong eventually (he even admitted as much later), but he was very hard on me in the interim. So, keep fighting the good fight! Seems you did pretty good today, these folks can be pretty intimidating.

btw, you are welcome to friend me back.

[nt-confidential.livejournal.com]

That's quite a considerable show of patience. Then again, the stakes were quite high. Back when I was in Engineering I had very little contact with the individual in question, but I could tell I didn't like him. It was probably an effect of disliking the way the faculty was structured and regimented in general.