the wheels of uni. admin go 'round and 'round...

Oh. good. grief. 

I have spent the last couple of days wrangling with various admin. departments at university trying to get permission to graduate.  
MTh had been submitted at the end of August.  Moving into the doctoral programme, I wasn't able to officially matriculate until the College that the School is a part of had sent word to Registry.  
Several weeks later, my identity as 'student without status' came to an end and I was allowed to matriculate as all my results had been received by the College.  
Hurrah.  
So... 
thinking life was hunky dory and graduation was in sight for the end of November, I continued getting to grips with the thesis, waiting for the College to send out notification of the award... 
which I would then send to Registry to enable me to graduate....            

and waited...                                         

and waited...
and the deadline loomed... 
there's a 3 week cut-off point, after which you can't graduate and have to wait for the next lot of graduations [winter and summer].
Waiting stopped.
Pro-active initiative [induced by slight alarm] seized the day.

I began to chase it up last week as time was rushing past.
I talked to Registry...
they confirmed I could not register until I had been given my award...
I talked to the College of Humanities...
They told me to register for graduation.
I went back to Registry...
Then back to the College, asking why, given that they had all my records and had allowed me to actually matriculate... why couldn't I graduate please?

I began to get dizzy...
verrrrry dizzy.
Circular discussions have a way of doing that to a person.
After several hours yesterday and today chasing all of this at last:

Letter of award sent to me via email from College whilst simultaneously on the phone to Registry guy who was telling me the deadline had just passed but we could do this... but we needed confirmation from College committee who were meeting on the 16th to discuss the MTh Research major dissertation folks... oh, but this was waaaaaay too late to graduate... oh, wait a minute... ahhh, we have an email... you'll be okay.

Still with me?  
Anyhow... 
after all this running around, to-ing and fro-ing... 
Cinderella does get to go to the graduation after all.  
Not so sure about a mate of mine, who is still in the dark about whether he has passed or not.

Sing with me...
The wheels of uni. admin go 'round and 'round
'round and 'round
'round and 'round
The wheels of uni. admin go 'round and 'round
all day long... 


Still, the admin. labyrinth of academia is good training for the church, I suspect!

[cartoon from Dave Walker]