Down

I have been really down all week since I discovered that I blew my chance with school. Long story short, I did not end up graduating last May because I had an outstanding incomplete that I was unable to finish. I was a bit perturbed about this particular class because it was not a graduation requirement but an extra elective, and I did not need the credits to graduate as I had taken all of the required credits — core classes and track electives — and the class was one I had picked up out of curiosity. However, because I listed this class in my Plan of Work for graduation, the dean required me to finish it with a B in order to receive my diploma.

After trying all bloody summer to figure out what to do about this situation, I ended up taking a leave of absence for the fall semester after it was determined I had no choice but to take the class, even though it wasn’t offered in the fall. The problem now is that the class is not offered in the spring, either, and this is the last semester I can take a class and still get my M.S. from the Tech Comm program at NC State. I enrolled in 2004 and you have to complete your credits within six years. I’ve got to decide now if I want to try to re-enroll or go somewhere else.

It was agreed that I would take an independent study this semester, but I had to apply for re-admission to the university after the leave of absence the university forced me to take. The letter I received from the dean, which was a copy of a letter addressed to my advisor and not written to me (I was referred to in the letter as “the student” and “she;” I suppose I should be grateful they didn’t refer to me by my fucking student ID number) told me to apply for re-admission after classes started because I could not get a PIN (necessary for online enrollment) until after classes started. When I returned to the Registration and Records site after classes started I was informed that I could not apply for re-admission because the re-admission period was closed and that I should have applied thirty days prior to the start of class.

There is no fighting this bureaucratic bullshit, and after four days of crying about this goddamned degree that I have gotten into thousands of dollars in debt over, struggled with every year because I did not see how it was helping my career, and getting a job in the field in which I studied because of my experience in the field, not because of my class work, I have realized that I have spent four years basically jerking off the North Carolina educational system (at great fucking expense to me) and that, professionally, which is why I joined the program, it got me absolutely nowhere.

While I feel that I am enriched by the time I spent in class and the ideas to which I was exposed, I have to admit that my career is still in marketing and that’s where I want to stay, and still today I know that an MBA would get me nowhere and is still not worth pursuing. So five years later, I got the salary I wanted five years ago—by busting my ass at my jobs and working my way here.

Thanks for nothing, NC State. I don’t know what to do with the credits now; I’m considering finding something to transfer them into, but all I want to do — all I’ve ever wanted to do — is write. I want to rewrite the screenplay and/or book that I had in me the day I first put an application together for NC State for the MFA program, and was rejected, and transferred my application to the MS in Tech Comm program instead.

I’m not really back where I’m started. I’m just still here. I really want to feel good that I got here on my own. But I owe a lot of money for nothing, my book still isn’t written, and I’m a hell of a lot older than I was five years ago, to come to the realization that I’ve just been running in place. It’s hard not to feel beat absolutely down.