Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Diplomated

Today I received a UPS shipment from my PhD alma mater: a new diploma! 
 
This was nice, since the last one had a random letter capitalized in the middle of my last name. Also, it was unexpected, since I hadn't complained to them about it.  I don't know why.  Imagined I was stuck with it, I guess.  Learned helplessness in the face of bureaucracy, that's for sure.
 
Unfortunately, the new diploma had a new error, in which it actually left out a letter, although there were no extraneous capitalizations this time.  This finally gave me the impetus to actually call them up and ask what the heck was going on. It helped that the return address contained a specific person's name and his phone number. Wow!
 
The guy was quite nice and explained that they had sent out the replacement because many of the PhD diplomas had had errors in them (blamed on some particular person, possible no longer there). Before I even told him about the new error, he spotted it and told me he would send out a new one, possibly tomorrow.
 
So, hey, for once being a squeaky wheel gets me some grease, instead of being the blade of grass that sticks up and gets cut off.

2 comments:

Andrew said...

Reminds me of a case file from Journalism School. A bio of a local man who was a decorated combat veteran was supposed to describe him as "battle scarred." But instead it came out "battle scared." The next day, the paper acknowledged the error, saying it should have read "bottle scarred." Oh well.

maddie said...

conGratulations Li&z!!

Maddie