As much as I love the University of Houston, I had to deal with my fair share of bureaucratic crap when I went there. That all paled in comparison to the bureaucratic crap I had to put up with when to get out of there. In the summer of 2001 a crucial hard drive of mine was formatted over. I flung into panic about all of the personal writing I'd lost (about a year's worth), the mp3s that I would have to re-rip from my CDs, and the general crap that comes with losing all of one's data. An afterthought was that I lost my academic work. Papers and programs I'd written were gone. I lost something else that would come back to haunt me.

In the spring I had dropped my Chem II-Honors class. I'd had enough trouble with Chem-I and I needed to scale back a little to keep my full-time work and full-time school schedule. A week later I was laid off from Nova, but it was too late. It was just as well, though, because I had no particular love of chemistry. A couple months before I realized that my chosen minor (Business Administration Education) was going to require an additional 30 hours (they'd only told me about 12 hours... some sort of misunderstanding that I probably can't blame them for) and I'd switched to Industrial Supervision. The problem is that Industrial Supervision required one class that was only offered in the fall. The long and short of it was that I would not be graduating until December 2001. So I figured while I was (okay, okay, my parents were) paying tuition for that fall, I'd go ahead and take Geology then.

Before signing up for my final summer and fall semesters, I consulted with an academic advisor to make sure that I got all the credits I would need to graduate. It was about then that I realized that among the other things lost in my reformatting was my class spreadsheet. My regular advisor was off on maturnity leave. I should have realized that this was shaping up to be really, really bad. My new advisor said that my schedule was great and that I'd graduate in December.

Six months or so later, he sent me a form letter saying that I was a Natural Science credit short of graduating.

I looked through the requirements; I needed six hours, I had six hours. What was he talking about? It took me about two days to finally track down the right course guide. Apparently the year before I got there, they upped the requirement to seven hours. Two years later, they dropped it back down to six. Since I declared my major my freshman year, I fell within that two year window and needed that seventh hour of credit. Because of one fraggin' hour, I wouldn't graduate until May 2002. Not only was I an hour short, but it was an hour that had nothing to do with my major and it was an hour the same advisor that said I couldn't graduate didn't say that I needed when I actually could have done something about it. Words cannot convey how low I felt. I called Audrey in a state of despair - something I rarely did given the timultuous nature of our relations - and even called Mom looking for solace. I figured Mom would be the angriest of all, but she really came shining through with a hilarious story about her time at Georgia Tech when a bunch of Montgomery GI's were denied their degrees for lacking a PE credit. I will never forget how supportive she was.

So with the hysteria passing, I had to figure out what I was going to do. Audrey suggested testing out of the credit (I couldn't find the information needed to) and Mom suggested going to San Jac to pick it up (I couldn't, the last 30 hours of credit had to be local). Desperate, I went back to the advisor, who said that I should have thought of that missing credit before I preverbally printed my graduation invitations. The fact that one of his job functions is to alert me of such things completely flew over his head. It wasn't as though I didn't do my part about seeing an academic advisor to make sure. I talked to my de-facto faculty advisor and she told me that I could apply for a waiver. She told me to see the department chair.

I talked to the Chair, who was surprisingly accessible, and told him about my situation. In his immortal words: "This is the dumbest thing I've heard since... well since this morning. It's not easy working in administration."

He gave me the form and said that he would be glad to sign it. I raced home, filled it out, and sent it back in. I asked him how long it would take me to get my degree. He said some time in January, assuming that all the credits had been met. By February, I was getting concerned.

I called the college office and asked them about it. They said to give it another couple weeks and hang up before I could respond. I gave them another couple of weeks and called back. "It was denied. You were missing a natural science credit." I asked who I could talk to about it, and he gave me the name of the advisor who signed off on my remaining credit and denied my graduation application.

The next couple of weeks were spent trying to contact the advisor. I finally had to take off early from work and go down there personally. He said that there wasn't any record of my applying for a waiver. Did I have my carbon copy? No, I never picked it up. It turns out that was a good decision on my part because it was still there. He said that should be sufficient, gave me another graduation application, and sent me on my merry way.

Two months later, he denied my second graduation application.

Not even bothering to try to call, I went down there again. He told me that he couldn't accept the yellow carbon copy (mine). He needed the white one. If I wanted to graduate, I had to get it signed all over again. That required a third half-day at work to talk to the Chair again. He signed off again, I turned it in along with a third graduation application.

Two months later, he denied my third graduation application.

I took my fourth half-day and went down there to talk to him again. He said that there was no record of my being a current student. He told me that I needed to be a current student in order to have a graduation application approved. I asked what I could do and he said I could sign up for a summer course and apply then. Somehow my graduation had been denied from December 2001 until August 2002 because I was missing a credit that I got waived twice (the first time while I actually was a student). This was unacceptable to me so I poured over the Student Handbook to see if I had any way that I could appeal, who I could talk to, and where exactly it said that I had to be currently enrolled. I found no information on any of the three items I was looking for. That was a good thing because it meant that no enrollment requirement existed.

Instead of talking to my advisor, I talked to the aforementioned professor. She told me that she would take care of it. Within a month, I got my degree, dated December 14, 2001. I didn't even have to send in a fourth application.