For me, this will be the semester I lost 10 pounds running between different departments just to make sure I’ll graduate in December. Come hell or high water, I’m leaving this university with a piece of paper. Now, whether Otterbein has decided that I have completed my major is debatable.
The first time I tried to graduate from Otterbein, they told me I was applying too early in the year and that people who planned on graduating in December 2011 should apply when we returned to school in the fall.
Keeping a cool head, I returned to school knowing that there was going to be mass confusion about graduation. Well, I certainly wasn’t wrong.
The close friends I knew that were also planning on graduating in December would tell me their Registrar’s Office horror stories. Things about degree audits telling them they wouldn’t graduate because of missing rudimentary classes or strange new INST requirements.
The second time I tried to apply to graduate, the attempt ended quickly. My degree audit showed that I hadn’t taken a sophomore-level journalism class, my creative writing minor credits were incomplete and I was missing an INST history class that I’ve never even heard of.
My mild confusion led me to Laurie Mayhew, the assistant registrar for graduate services. In the Registrar’s Office, Mayhew has seen too many students to count, but the students that have come to her with questions either showed up at the Registrar’s Office or in my case, their adviser pointed them in her direction.
When I first talked to Mayhew, she explained that the office was still in the process of building the transition majors and minors into the system, which is a tedious and slow process.
“We are also dealing with an upgraded system for Banner. We’re still learning that,” Mayhew said.
Mayhew was extremely helpful because she went into the system and personally fixed the problems with my degree audit. My degree audit was flawless.
The third time I tried to apply for graduation required me to go somewhere else. I was turned away with my degree audit because I didn’t have the official copy of my Individual Advising Plan (IAP).
My problem was I didn’t know where to find it. The Registrar’s Office pointed me in the direction of the Center for Student Success.
The Individual Advising Plan functions as a failsafe in case the degree audits of graduating seniors were inaccurate. This pink piece of paper was my final ticket to getting out of this place in December.
Of course it wasn’t that easy: When I arrived at the Center for Student Success, my IAP wasn’t even on campus at the time.
With the transition, all departments and offices have been playing catch-up over the summer and fall. Kate Lehman, the assistant dean for student success, has been going through each IAP that students submitted last spring.
“Many departments submitted them to us on a rolling basis in the spring,” Lehman said. “The (communication) department was simply one of the later departments to submit, and they submitted a large batch of them at the end of the academic year. I try to keep them on campus at all times. A lot of times I take small batches home with me, and then I take them back to campus. They’re never away from campus for more than 48 hours.”
When I walked into the Registar’s Office and the Center for Student Success, I could feel the strain and tension. Both offices seemed overworked.
Maybe a possible explanation for the tension is the lack of help. Aside from the Center for Student Success opening, the administration decided not to hire anyone else to help the Registrar’s Office or the Center for Student Success. Lehman was already employed to Otterbein before her position was created.
“We’re sitting here and we’re converted,” Lehman said. “I think things have gone well. Sure, we could have had a lot more people helping us. I think we’re trying to be fiscally responsible and think about what’s reasonable. Students are already sensitive to the cost of tuition, and I think it’s important that we’re responsible with students’ fees.”
The fourth time I applied for graduation, Mayhew accepted my packet with a smile.
I imagine that if I had problems, who knows how many students have had the same? There’s no way to know.
It goes without saying that my journey into graduation has been rocky at best. We will look back on it as the year we wish never happened.
