Red tape – a student’s bogey...

After the morning trip to my school, took almost in vain. In vain I deluded myself that I’d manage to fix a date of my BA final exam (PL: obrona – deliberately I don’t translate in literally, the words ‘defence’ and ‘defend oneself’ sound confusingly). It can be done only after all lecturers deliver the exam protocols to the dean’s office, what in my case won’t occur earlier than on 30th June (all the attempts of speeding up the process were fruitless). Then I'll have to wait for Pani Małgosia to tap the grades into the internal system and then close down the last semester and give me a credit. Yesterday I talked with the friend of mine, who studies at UMK in Toruń. For no apparent reason she doesn’t have her MA thesis graded by the supervisor (PL: promotor) nor reviewed, but has the date of her final exam already set for 14th July. I finished writing my thesis in February, had it graded in March and put it in on 5th May, I also know I’ve passed all exams and know the grades – doesn’t matter – I won’t catch through…

To boot, to receive the diploma, I’ll have to lay down my student card – that means I’ll be deprived of the status of student and all my rights (including discounts, mostly fare discounts) will be taken away from me for two months (August and September). But it’s going to shape up, it has to (either way I can also ship out, not recommendable).

The only formality I got on with was the clearance slip (PL: obiegówka), all the departments put their stamps on the card, so I’m clear with the school…

After a supposedly free week I suppose I fell victim to a procrastination (BTW – the next example of young Poles willing to show off with their English, they came up with the word ‘prokrastynacja’, instead of calling it simply ‘zwlekanie’) not in terms of learning but other stuff to handle. I put everything what could wait back to these weeks in the second half of June, so I’m still running errands – good for me – I never could spend my time idle, at least I’ll enter the second half of the year without a ‘list of things to do’ piled up relentlessly . Although the final exam and bureaucracy which enrolment on MA studies involves won’t let me have such quiet summer holidays like last year (combining internships and learning English).

SGH authorities should think seriously about renaming our school into “Warsaw School of Officialdom” (Szkoła Główna Biurokratyczna). Candidates would know what they’d be in for, it would render the main thing student tussle with there – not learning but legwork, paperwork, getting to grips with WD, etc.