My time at CCA has been wrought with administration issues that never seem to end. The first semester I was there, I nearly lost my classes because my signed financial aid award letter was somehow lost between the US Post office and the CCA Student Affairs office. I had to scrounge up $2000 and was so stressed out that I got an ulcer in my throat that wouldn’t heal. Then I found out that they had lost my last set of transcripts. The saddest part is that I found out from the exhibitions coordinator, not the administration. She just noticed that I didn’t seem to have enough credits for a senior exhibition and thought she should warn me. I went into the office to hand deliver a second set of transcripts and found out that they had lost my entire file folder of paperwork. It took three semesters, a few faxes, several emails, and many people signing many papers in special sequences to get everything straightened out with my transcripts. Then last summer they lost my financial aid paperwork again which took some long hours and hand holding to coax the financial aid office to get my paperwork through before I was dropped from my classes. Even when they finally got around to my paperwork, they forgot to include my Cal Grant, so I had to have them redo it again on the spot, looking over their shoulder like some sort of micromanaging worrywart. Now I find out that I was supposed to have received an application for graduation last summer. All the graduation paperwork on my end has to be done by March 14th and is completely reliant on their having approved my application which I never received. I only found out about these other graduation requirements from a flier hanging on the cafeteria wall for a mandatory meeting this week. And only because I am curious and proactive did that flier prompt me to try and find some graduation information on the cca website. That’s when I found out about the whole missing application snaffoo. So this week, on top of all the deadlines I have, I will be spending probably hours in the offices of cca trying to get someone to help me get an application for graduation form so I can get out of that rotten fly trap.
It’s so sad that a school that’s been around for 100 years can’t even manage to get its students through their system. I’m not the only one who’s had these sorts of problems. Seems like whenever I start up a conversation about this stuff at school, someone’s got a worse story to share. It’s as if someone has decided that degree programs should include wrestling with institutional bureaucracy as a requirement for completion. As if it’s suppose to help us navigate the world. But let me tell you, I navigated plenty of the world and there is nothing worse than the twisted, gnarled mess of art school administration “systems”. There really aren’t any systems involved here. Just chaos, lack of ownership, and general confusion on the parts of all cca staff who are involved in administration in any way, shape, or form. It’s a miracle anyone graduates.
Yeah, a little bitter am I. The rest of my school experience has been pretty great, more or less. Just why, oh why, are they so bad at records and paperwork? Why?
Update: I found out that the references to this application for graduation on the website and on the forms is all just make believe. They’ve never had an application for graduation, at least not for undergrads. So, few! I am still graduating in May.