Angst at the Academy

Good evening, my friends. Today I wish to relate my experiences in the Academy. Be forewarned, I will be largely venting frustration hereafter. So far I have not gone neither a semester nor a quarter without changing majors. When I started at Oxnard in the fall of 2007, I was a history major, but their disorientation upset me, and I decided to change to music. I did this because I wanted to move to the Conservatory in the fall, and I thought it would be wise to do music things in preparation. My first semester at Oxnard, however, I was a history major, for I had to make the change for the next semester. The second semester, therefore, I was a music major. The degree I would have gotten on this track was a Bachelor of Arts in music, which would have with it a concentration. I certainly would have chosen music history, but I did not stay long enough for that to be relevant.

In the course of the second semester, I was accepted into the Conservatory to major in music history, which was a Bachelor of Music degree. I was excited about this for a long time, then they began to explain all the unpleasant things that I would have to do, including certain requirements that would delay my progress significantly. I became very upset with the Conservatory, so on the first day of my first quarter there, I dropped all my music classes and began the bureaucratic procedures required to become a history major again. Thus I spent this last quarter as a music history major, but as of today, I am a double major in history and philosophy.

Let us go back a few months. It was the gloaming of summertime, and I had ordered the Evil College Board to send my AP scores to the University at Cincinnati. They did this, and I received a letter assuring me that this was so. It then only remained for me to wait for the bureaucracy to process them, but this did not take place. In October, registration for the winter quarter began, but I did not know this. Because seventy-seven of my credit hours (the quarter system makes this number a third higher than it would be under the semester system) were coming in the form of AP scores, the Man considered me to be a mere first-quarter sophomore, when in fact I was a third-quarter junior. This delayed my registration for the winter quarter by several weeks, for registration is prioritized by the number of credit hours one has to his name. At Oxnard this was not a problem, since I was in the honors program. I am not in the honors program at Cincinnati. I have no patience for its absurd requirements, and its delaying my graduation would make it cost more than its minuscule scholarship would provide. How insipid is that?

At any rate, I am still fighting to register for classes I do not even want to take, as nearly all of them were full by the time I was allowed to register, and all this because my AP scores were lost in the bureaucracy. It was not until recently that my inquiries into the matter revealed that this was the case, and the scores were processed. The damage, however, is still being done. My burning resentment of the University at Cincinnati is firmly sealed, and it is my firm intent to graduate as soon as possible.

How soon is that? It is next December, at which time I will have complete the required year in the College of Arts and Sciences. There are, however, stipulations to that plan. Most importantly, I cannot be a history major, as there is this absurd sequence of courses that would take until the Spring to finish, which is supposed to teach me how to think like an historian. I do not mind dropping history, though. I can still be a history minor without all the ridiculousness, and it has come to my attention that the history department at Cincinnati is dreadful. Its offerings are slim and uninteresting. The philosophy department, however, is rather nice, with broad and interesting course offerings. Therefore I mean to become a philosophy major and a history minor.

There is an obstacle for the minor. This is transfer credit. Some people talk about the wonderful thing that is CAS, which stands for Course Applicability System. It is supposed to handle the transfer of credit from university to university, which is fine unless you are transferring courses that are not listed therein, like me. If that is the case, you wind up with useless free electives out the wazoo, even if the identity of two courses is very obvious. For example, at Oxnard they offer a course in the Philosophy of Religion, which that Academy calles "Problems of God and Morality." I took this course, and it was great. Cincinnati offers a course called Philosophy of Religion. The Course Applicability System (which, by the way, is operated by the Academy at Oxnard) does not list these courses, so the transfer does not happen. For another, Oxnard's Development of Christianity does not match up to Cincinnati's History of Christianity, despite being obviously the same. They simply are not listed. Because of this nonsense, I must now persuade the University at Cincinnati that certain courses are, in fact, the same. This includes two history courses that would complete the history minor. There is a form to fill out, which will also correct a blatant error in the transfer credit. Such incompetence!

On another dissonant note, a dissonant note out of context no less, I would like to add that today I discovered that an unpleasant course I took last quarter, thinking it fulfilled an unpleasant requirement, counted for no such thing. As it turns out, as no one saw fit to tell me, there is a very specific and narrow list of courses that fulfill certain requirements, including the "Social and Behavioral Science" requirement, and despite being very much a "Social and Behavioral Science" course, it did not count. The rationale for this is beyond me, unless it is money. I think for certain the issue is money. The narrower the requirements, the fuller the classes, and the fuller the classes, the more students like me have to wait to take these classes. The longer I am at the University, the more money they can draw out. Furthermore, the fuller the classes, the more efficient the system is, but at the same time it is less effective. How dismal.

As a philosophy major and a senior at last, I shall have divers courses from which to choose, and they shall not be closed. Of course, I shall have to take a few extra hours and perhaps a couple of courses in the summer, but this shall not bother me. If I manage to graduate on schedule, I can begin grad school at the very start of 2010. Otherwise, I shall have to wait until the fall. This means that I shall soon have to go looking for schools, which is a strange combination of mildly exciting and rather depressing. I have a few ideas, but I do not wish to speak of them yet. After all, I still have to deal with my accursed schedule for this quarter.