UPDATE: I’m not exactly certain, but I think the issue has been resolved now.
If you want to experience bureaucracy, you should try enrolling in a large university. There are a million different little tasks you have to take care of to graduate from UBC. Even though I meticulously completed every single one of those tasks, I had a strange feeling that I’d encounter a hiccup because of the large bureaucracy machine at UBC.
Well, I was right. Just before I was scheduled to head downtown today, I received an e-mail from my academic supervisor. The contents of the e-mail raised immediate concern. According to my supervisor, the grades for the last two classes I took had not been submitted yet and without those grades, I wouldn’t be able to graduate until November, a seven month delay. I was told to get in touch with the instructors of those two classes and have them submit those grades immediately.
So I did not hesitate to call both those instructors immediately. Both were not in their offices, but I left a detailed message explaining my situation. As an additional measure, I also e-mailed both of them. Having no other way of contacting them, I decided I could steal away for a couple hours downtown.
While I was downtown, I checked my voicemail and one of my instructors had already replied. She had indeed submitted my marks yesterday. To her credit, she even double-checked with one of the departmental assistants. My mark had been entered into the computer yesterday and from their end of the computer system, they could see it.
When I returned home shortly before 5pm, I checked my e-mail and the other instructor had replied as well. He submitted my mark on Friday or possibly even Thursday, but regardless, he told me he physically handed in a sheet of marks to the departmental office staff for entry into the system.
At least to me, I can’t see where anyone did anything wrong. Both my instructors submitted my marks prior to today. One instructor even confirmed it shows up on the system, the only system is used to check student grades. Hell, I just checked my grades on-line and even I can see both of them. The record is complete.
So, the question remains, why am I teetering on the edge of a delayed graduation? Because this is what happens when a huge, complex series of events have to occur for even just a single student to graduate. It’s almost amusing to think that something that is completely out of my control might cause me to not graduate in May.
I am hoping that in the morning, everything will have cleared up, but the cynical part of me won’t be surprised if the fun has just started.