Drama/ bureaucracy

It's kind of like one of those nightmares where you're back in college and you have to take a final for a class you didn't realize you were signed up for, or have apparently been skipping all semester.

I got my thesis advisors' and the graduate coordinator's signatures on the required form, and turned it in to the grad college a good hour and a half before today's 5:00 deadline. That would be the deadline for May graduation for the submission of my electronic thesis/dissertation (ETD) form. I was so excited to have it turned in that I grinned like a maniac the whole way home, despite the fact that I still had my entire Tuesday lecture left to prepare.

At 4:15, I got a call from the secretary of the school of art, telling me the grad college said my form was missing a signature--a signature from Rebecca, the chair of the department, who I'd already tried to get a hold of earlier in the day to sign it. I'd assumed her signature wasn't actually necessary; I called the grad college and they told me differently, based on another form I'd filled out last October. They said I would have to print off a new form (regulations apparently forbidding returning the original to me) and have both Rebecca and the grad coordinator sign it.

I'd already e-mailed, called, and knocked on Rebecca's office door, but now I called her home, her cell, her husband's office, her husband's department secretary, and even rode my bike to her house to repeatedly ring her doorbell... all to no avail. I called the grad college to inquire about the possibility of extension, and was told that the assistant dean, who was in a meeting, would have to be consulted and that there would be no word until tomorrow.

I dropped the form off with the art department secretary and was in her office when Rebecca finally called me back on my cell, at 5:40. The grad coordinator (second signature) had already gone home, so I just left the form for the two to sign in the morning.

Fingers are crossed that they'll still let me graduate in May and not make me pay for another hour of tuition to graduate in August... I will, of course, keep you posted.