Not long before I left work today, TOTO came to me with a copy of our local paper’s Letters to the Editor and pointed out one written by someone who is “done” with our university. The letter writer ended it by saying she would do her master’s degree at our rival university, which is probably one of the reasons TOTO enjoyed it so much, seeing as she’s a graduate from that same university.
And that’s all well and good. TOTO is more than entitled to rub it in our faces that her football team is better than ours and all sorts of other things. But quite frankly, the things that the letter writer complained about kind of pissed me off. And the more I thought about it, the more angry I became.
Make no mistake about it; I wholeheartedly believe that things could be much better where I went to school and now work. But I hardly think the reasons listed were reasons to declare yourself “done” with your alma mater. For starters, she complained about paying an exorbitant amount for parking, while not being able to find a spot to park. This is such a bullshit complaint. There is plenty of parking on campus. What the real complaint is “I don’t want to have to walk far.” Usually said while whining. I have a friend (Hi Mon, if you’re reading!) who went to MSU and every morning for a while, we’d drop each other emails and complain about how long it was taking for spring to arrive. Mon had to walk a hell of a long way from her car to her building and frequently complained of frozen things, but never about the walking itself. Because that is a fact of life at universities and people need to get over the whole “woe is me” aspect of actually using their feet to transport themselves from one location to another.
The letter writer complained of her husband’s poor advising. I sympathize. As a non-traditional student myself, I also had a terrible adviser. Fortunately, I knew how to read a degree audit and I talked to one of my professors who made sure I was on the right track. In other words, *gasp* I took responsibility for my own education. I understand there are bad advisers. One of my colleagues who wants to attend classes right now just experienced a frustrating time finding the answers he needed. It often takes more than one phone call to more than one person. This is a legitimate issue, but from what I’ve heard from others at different universities, this is not a problem exclusive to our university. TOTO’s experience at our rival university was a good one. I’m glad for that. But that doesn’t mean other problems don’t exist. I was cautioned to hold off on looking into a particular program offered at that rival university because they’ve lost some of their better faculty members in the department. Hopefully, the letter writer’s experience will be similar to TOTO’s, but guess what? Nothing is guaranteed.
I think the thing that ticked me off the most was the biggest reason our letter writer listed for being “done” with our university: ticket limits on commencement. A couple of different issues led to these ticket limits. Fall commencement was canceled due to inclement weather and all those students were invited back to participate in the spring ceremony. But since our campus arena is undergoing renovation, individual colleges had to have their commencements in other locations. Hence the ticket limits. The letter writer was upset that there weren’t enough tickets for four parents and a spouse to attend.
We had a student working for us who is from Poland. She found out very late that both her grandfather and her father would be able to come to the U.S. to attend her graduation and this was going to result in a problem with the ticket limit. She talked to us for ideas and TOTO put her in touch with someone who might have been able to help. We told her to talk to her adviser to see if perhaps he was aware of anyone who wasn’t using a ticket. TOTO suggested asking other students in her classes. We don’t know for certain if she was able to get them all in, because when we saw her last, she only said that graduation was “perfect.” But through it all, even while she was trying to find that extra ticket, she never once complained.
We should all be so gracious.
