When the kids were (much) young(er), they had this game called Nintendo and Super Mario..... I didn't know much about it but they really seemed taken with it so one day I joined them on the floor and took a controller. It has you jump over obstacles and dodge flying objects which, if they should make repeated contact with your token, effectively ends the game for you and you start over. It took a while for me to "get" them and then what to do with them and I FINALLY make it to the end of the game.
Or so I thought, That was merely the first level. Now I learn how to swim and get past obstacles and dodge sting rays and other dangerous creatures. After a while I realize this isn't for me but I get how it can be fun because it is challenging.
It occurred to me this morning, as I mucked the coop, nothing better prepared B daughter for collegiate life than this game. Hear me out.
B Daughter is a rising English Lit Senior (she has "studied" Beowolf in so many classes she could write a dissertation, nevermind a thesis on this epic) at a large University and is entering the period most fraught with danger. This means, like Luigi she has maneuvered through at least 30 different classes since 2006 (4 levels) with perhaps 28 different Professors (dangerous creatures throwing things at you) and all those paper, essays, tests and finals (more dangerous obstacles.) Classes now are in the 4000 level and fewer to be found with more prerequisites applied.
She recently learned that the College added a 2000 level class to her audit. This would a remedial class and so she went to the Eng dept to sort this out and they agreed that no she didn't need it. They would remove it. (Super powers!) It didn't go away. (boo!) so she pursued the issue further and with every desk she approached, they concurred and passed her to the next desk/ department/ college until she was finally dealt with yesterday. This person "tweaked" her audit and said "There! You're ALL set!"
So B went out and opened her laptop to confirm this and found that yes indeed, that class was eliminated and they added 15 required hours to her audit. Needless to say, she marched BACK in and was told they couldn't schedule her til NEXT week to make corrections. I think it was at this point in time, she began to have a meltdown. Up til then, she was holding on to sanity.
Meanwhile as all this is happening, she is missing the first several classes of the semester trying to get IN to classes she HAD been in only to be informed that one of them required a background in OPERA. I kid you not! OPERA. In the English curriculum. (It is being taught by TWO professors and this University is NOT known for OPERA as a major so you have to wonder just how many students have met with the requirements. It might end up with 2 teachers discussing the subject between themselves)
So since she didn't meet the requirements, she passed over to another class and met a student who WAS in that class and discovered that the information B had been given was simply NOT the case.
Are you following me on the Super Mario analogy?
She was within 2 semesters of graduating and is now knocked back til at least, at LEAST Winter 2011.
I have no idea how this is going to end up and THANK GOD in heaven this ISN'T Super Mario because at this point her character would be laying on the ground with x's for eyes and a tongue hanging out.
I would have thrown in the towel but not until AFTER I threw every fit in the book in front of the people who caused my audit to go to all hell and then said they couldn't "help" me til next week. Honestly..... and THIS is what we go into debt to obtain!
Go figure.
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