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louxnoelle
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NWR - angry/frustrated tears, I can feel them … {rant} - UPDATE
I'm finishing up my spring semester of college, and the amount of communication issues I am having with people "in charge" is killing me.
My advisor has been essentially MIA this entire year to help with transfer credits and selecting future classes, and when I finally did have a face-to-face meeting set up with him, he forgot about it and was 15 minutes late. He then legitimately refused to look at the academic plan I had made for myself, saying he didn't know which courses I needed, and to just look at the sheet of paper they print saying what's required for all majors … I did look at that paper. That's how I know what I need to fulfill. Can you please tell me if these particular classes fulfill those requirements?
A professor of mine agreed to let me reschedule an evening final for an unavoidable work commitment, and will not email me back. I sent three emails leading up to the final (each time thinking he was just busy and would eventually get back to me), and two since the final. He has not responded to even one of them! If, for some weird reason, he was reneging on the offer to let me reschedule, can you just fucking please email me back and let me know?! The final is 50% of my grade, so without it I failed.
I emailed the head of the department asking for any guidance or an alternative way to get in touch with the professor, who is adjunct and therefore does not have an office for me to just camp out at, which I would be willing to do. Their response was that it's at the professor's discretion to make exceptions to final schedules, and that the professor is under no obligation to reschedule my test. I explained that the professor DID agree to reschedule my final, it's not like I just blew the test off assuming I could email him the next day for an alternate date. Now they won't return my email either.
I have been professional and respectful in all communication. I cannot believe that the faculty of a college can be so blasé about helping a student who is trying to be proactive and successful. Is it not their job to teach, guide, and assist? Even if an email was not what I wanted to hear, I would just appreciate a response at this point - why am I begging professors and administrators to answer a student's emails?!
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Re: NWR - angry/frustrated tears, I can feel them … {rant} - UPDATE
I normally lurk but I had to respond to this because it's just so awful. I'm a PhD student who has been teaching undergraduate classes all year and I can't believe that they would treat you like this!! It's so unprofessional!
Unfortunately though, while part of their job is to teach, it's not the teaching that gets them hired and/or promoted so many professors can get away with blowing off students to concentrate on their research - which is what will get them hired and promoted - the incentive structure sucks. And if the Head of Department is willing to blow off a student, then that attitude will filter down.
If I were you, I would print out all of the emails you have sent and the few that you have received back and take them to whoever advocates for students on your campus - this is sometimes the Dean of Students. I can imagine that you might be hesitant about going outside of the dept (I know I would be) but blowing off a student during finals week is unacceptable and if the Head isn't willing to do anything about it, I really think you have to - and you need to do it as soon as possible as it will be much easier to sort this out while the semester is still in session than during the summer when the adjunct will no longer be an employee.
I am nervous about going all the way to the Dean or somebody of that nature, but I think I'll take this advice because I don't know what else to do. Thank you, it's really appreciated.
The title's differ so they might not be a Dean, they might an Ombudsman as someone else said, which sounds less intimidating
If you can, do this today. If this is finals week for you, the adjunct's contract might end next week (mine does) and you absolutely need this in motion if not resolved by the time the contract ends.
I am not an administrative assistant, but I do have to intervene often with faculty. Many of them don't have admins, so I am sort of a catch-all (even though my job has many, many more moving parts). Generalizing a bit here, but it is based on lots of experience- many faculty members don't do admin stuff. So the idea of setting up an exam for you isn't something they want to touch (even though they said they would). I have had students come to me in a similar position and I just go to the faculty and say "so and so needs to make up their exam. They can do it in my office at X, Y, Z times. Please email me a copy of the exam and I will administer it for you." This tends to catch them much faster than the student themselves.
Crappy, for sure, and pretty unacceptable. But you may just need to work around it.
I may have been a little extreme - for every semester, I had three or four different "plans" to fit in requirements and prereqs. I knew some classes were offered at multiple times within a semester, while others were only offered once a semester - or, God forbid, once every spring but not in the fall, or vice versa. So I had backups for my backups I case those classes filled up.
Be your own adviser is the absolute best advice. My advisers were over the whole college within the university. Like, College of Science and Math had 5 advisers. College of Liberal Arts had 6. Stuff like that. They could not be any more specific than the course catalog anyway. All I relied on them to do was open my access to classes.
Where I work- I would suggest (in this order) Faculty Member (which clearly isn't working), Program Admin (me, and I would do it for you), Program Director (he is not likely to do it, he would pass it to me, but he would at least light a fire under the ass of the faculty member), Academic Affairs (responsible for faculty, but would again, pass it back to me), THEN, maybe the Office of Student Affairs. They would also pass it back to me.
Bottom line is someone needs to help and it is BS that they won't, but make sure you are asking the right person.
While this was years and years ago, I still hold a bit of a grudge against one of my college advisers. I had one for each major. I thought I would be graduating with 2 majors but found out while applying for graduation that an adviser gave me bad advice: I took one class too many in bucket A and was one short in bucket B. Basically, I took one higher level class more than I needed and was short one intro Spanish course. The requirements changed while I was in school and he never stayed updated. I graduated on time but with a major and a minor, not a second major.
Possibly. I'm helping my incoming-freshman sister plan out a few for practice this weekend!