my  block

where uzairs roam

Honestly, I’ve had it up to here with the nincompoop-edness of LSE administrative folks. I’ve been waiting for my degree certificate since my December 18 graduation ceremony (which I didn’t attend). I assumed that graduates would have been handed their certificates there but it turned out that wasn’t the case, so I waited a couple of weeks until the Christmas and New Year holidays were over and then gave the Registrar’s Office a call, only to be redirected to the University of London because they’re the ones who issue the certificates.

Of course, the UoL sent me back to LSE because they have to send a list of names and degree classifications for the certificates to be issued. LSE told me the staffer responsible wasn’t in that day and that I should send her an email. I asked for her phone number and tried calling her several times over the next couple of days, but of course never got through.

At this point, I was getting sick of the whole process, so I took a couple of hours off work and went down to the LSE Student Services office to see someone in person and get it taken care of. After a fifteen minute wait in the queue (keep in mind this is the beginning of January, before classes have started…and that there was a staffer sitting at the counter browsing the ‘net while people were waiting), the staffer there told me that they absolutely couldn’t do anything to send the names early. I explained that I needed it for a visa application and asked her what she recommended, which predictably was that I get a transcript and a letter on LSE letterhead.

I could see I wasn’t getting anywhere so I politely said OK and asked her if she could have that prepared ASAP. Err…no. There’s a process, she explained to me as she handed me a glossy brochure and underlined the email address I would have to send the request to. I tried not to give her a dirty look as I asked her how long it would take. The answer, predictably, was 5 business days. At this point I was getting really pissed off, so with a level voice I said, “Look I don’t mean to be rude, but is there anything you guys can prepare for me anytime soon?” She was momentarily (but very visibly) taken aback but then recovered to try and feed me the “process” line again, adding that “we have a lot of students”. Right, and what I’m asking you to do is infinitely more complicated than pulling up my file and pushing a button to print a standard piece of paper.

I thanked her (a little gruffly) and went back to the office and sent an email to the address she had underlined. A few minutes later I got an auto-reply telling me I should request the transcript through their web-based system (”Look, we have the internets and we’re so cool!”). I knew that the email I had sent would eventually be read by a human being (who would hopefully have the sense to print out the transcript instead of being a smug turd), but I thought I should have a try with the web-based system as well; of course it threw an error and I wasn’t able to order them that way.

That was Wednesday. On Friday afternoon I learned that the human readers of my email were, in fact, smug turds: an email arrived telling me to use the online transcript ordering system.

You would think that for the more-than-10k fee international students pay for an LSE degree, they would have the decency to accommodate an urgent request. Apparently, they don’t.