Monday, May 7, 2007

There's Some Ointment on my Fly

Have you ever heard the expression, "fly in the ointment"? Well, I've moved far beyond that. Right now, the only ointment to be seen is on the greasy little feet of the fly that is hovering over my head.

As I have posted elsewhere, I was in Phoenix last week, defending my graduate project/thesis. It took a long, long time to get to that point and when it was over, I literally cried tears of joy. I defended, I submitted documents, I filed and refiled; in short, I did everything I thought I had to do to leave the state of Arizona no longer a student. When got in the car to leave campus, I was crying tears of relief from the kind of exhaustion one feels in the bones. I felt body numbing joy.

Unfortunately, I am not accustomed to long term happiness. My sense of paranoia is one of my more endearing traits, it has contributed to my survival on a couple of occasions. It was this feeling that made me call the Graduate College on Friday afternoon to make sure they weren't missing anything. Considering the many, many things that had gone wrong during my graduate program, it seemed appropriate that I double and triple check things before I got used to the fuzzy feeling of happiness. And that's when I heard the bad news.

"Oh, yes. Here are the notes I had made, Miss. We sent you some emails a few months back, but they bounced. Basically, we need you to file your POS electronically. We shredded all of the paper forms you originally submitted."

I felt waves of nausea. And really, really pissed off. Not at anyone in particular (except myself), just at the situation in general.

An hour later, after trying to refile my forms electronically, calling half the people I knew in variously involved departments and I had to try to calmly speak to the nice lady who had shredded my papers. It seems that while they destroyed my paper documents, they didn't bother to enter the correct information to my account which would allow me to complete documents online. I'd have to get the entire department involved in my filing process. AGAIN!

The good news is, if I feel the urge to don an overpriced polyester robe and a slippery polyester cap and walk around campus in Arizona's summer heat, no one will stop me. Why would they? They're probably sitting in an air conditioned room laughing at me. However, I still have to find a way to resolve this issue in time to meet a deadline that will allow me to have my overpriced piece of paper in my sweaty little hands by mid-summer.

Once all that is over, I will resume my new practice of experiencing joy.

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