RU Screw... DENIED!!!

I thought I finally got bent over and given that nice, hard screw... Rutgers style... 

One hears speak of the RU screw a lot, especially when graduation season is upon the campus.  For lack of a better explanation, the RU screw is when Rutgers University f*cks you over, usually financially so you go into significant debt or academically in such a way that you can't graduate when you thought you could...  There are milder forms of the RU screw that are less damaging, but just as annoying.  However, Rutgers is really famous for those massive screws...

And I thought I had that massive screw coming last night... when my advisor emailed me and told me that I had not fulfilled a graduation requirement and that my declared date of graduation (May 2009) was incorrect.

Imagine my surprise, me, the one who literally spent hours every semester mapping out the next semester when it was time to register for classes, referencing and cross-referencing core, degree and graduation requirements... Me, who, swears by my freshman catalog like it's the bible, constantly pouring over my major requirements to make sure that I didn't miss anything because I'm paranoid that somehow I DID miss something... Me, who has already been accepted into grad school in London on the condition that I have a bachelor's degree no later than August... ME?!?!?!?!? Are you sure, how could that happen to me?

If you miss a requirement for MY major, then you pretty much are screwed.  There are no food science classes offered over the summer and they are only offered one semester per academic year... That means, if I did indeed fail to take some class this spring, I would have to wait until next spring to take it...   A whole extra year, I would had to spend at Rutgers, when every cent of my financial aid expires after this semester and London is calling my name...

I felt like shooting myself... I then proceeded to cry for two hours and die a little bit on the inside.  And then I got angry.  I called three people to vent and promise that I would burn Rutgers down to the ground tomorrow.  Then I actually started to think.  I made a list of all the potential classes that could fulfill that supposedly missed requirement.  I made a list of all the professors that I would have to email to beg them to let me in their class more than halfway through the semester so I could graduate, and how I would have to convince them of the misunderstanding that my advisor and I had last summer that led to this... I then proceeded to cry for another hour and went to sleep because there was nothing that I could do at 12:30 AM that would remedy the situation and wouldn't further upset me.

I waited until my advisor emailed me again the next morning... that meant he was in his office.  I bathed, got dressed, made a to-do-list and drove down to the Food Science building to confront him.

So the problem was, the computer wasn't recognizing my classes because I was on the old track and there were a whole new set of requirements for the next graduating class after me.  In fact

This has been happening to me since I was a sophomore, this whole, not recognizing of my classes.  I've had to get prerequisite override forms for classes that I know I had taken the prereqs for... it's quite annoying.  This has been giving me panic attacks for the past three years, resulting in the sending of long desperate emails to advisors and professors...  It's been driving me crazy!

I won't let Rutgers get it in, so it's like a sexually frustrated boy... he can't screw you, so he just messes with your head.

So thanks Rutgers, for giving me puffy eyes and a mild heart attack for no reason...

Eagerly awaiting graduation,

~LondonBoundGirl