Can I just tell you all for a moment how much I really hate my university? Really and truly hate my university. Now, I am well aware that grad students are notorious complainers. We live fairly cushy lives, despite our measly incomes, and for the most part we tend to come from fairly priviledged backgrounds, etc. So yada yada yada… long story short I fully acknowledge that our complaints probably sound pretty trivial in the whole scheme of things. Okay, with my disclaimer out of the way, can I just say that I still hate being treated like crap by this university? This school fawns over big shot professors based on the principle that big names=quality education. Now, I don’t know how that works out for the undergrads, but I would have to say it generally doesn’t work out so well for the grad students, especially since the university is also committed to a high grad student to faculty ratio (read=too many grad students vying for the attention of a few largely disinterested prima donna profs). But okay, maybe that’s the case everywhere. Getting taken under someone’s wing is the bane of grad students everywhere.

But when your health care sucks, you get paid 2 months late because no one thought to put you on the payroll, and your library is run by a bunch of incompetent retards, you tend to get pretty damn pissed off. And folks, that’s what I am right now: pissed off. I’m pissed that the stupid RN at the student care center completely dismissed my health concerns and that I’ve had to wait two weeks to get an appointment with an actual MD in the hopes that they won’t just shrug their shoulders at me and ask, “why do you think this is a problem?” I’m pissed that the interlibrary loan department kept me in the dark about a loan for two months, then ignored the first email I sent them asking about it, then got pissy about the second email I sent a week later asking about it, then on the same day that the wrote me back saying they didn’t know anything about the book I wanted, they apparently did find out something about the book I wanted and didn’t think to mention it to me, and then cancelled my request today because my request had expired. I’m pissed that I can’t teach next year because teaching positions are highly coveted, even though I got my first paycheck for the class I taught last quarter in the 8th week of the term (that’s out of a roughly 12 week term) because no one thought to mention to the division that I was teaching, and I had to go and talk to 4 different people over about 3 weeks to get thing straightened out.*

In short, I’m just pissed. Pissed that I’ve been sitting on the project I’ve wanted to do for 5 years and I’m only now really getting started on it. Pissed that it’s not only the little professional aggrevations that I have to deal with, but that every step along the way, there’s always someone fucking up and making more stupid, energy-draining busywork for me to do without even the slightest apology for the fact that it was their fuck-up and not mine. And I’m pissed that in my anger, I’ve inhaled a bag of popcorn and about half a pound of Sour Patch Kids. ARGGGGGHHHHH!!!!!!

K. I feel a little better now. I also feel better for having written a charmingly passive aggressive email to the retarded library staff :-) Although I’m getting really good at this by now. Question: how do you draw the line between passive agressive notes and just plain aggressive ones? Anyone?

*Yes, they are run-on sentences. Deal with it.