Good news, everyone!

I got another piece of paper in the mail from Lehman today, and it hasn't even been a full three months since the last one! I guess they are just really on top of their game with diploma distribution this year.

Dear May Graduate

Congratulations on your graduation from Lehman College.

Diploma Distribution will begin:

Tuesday October 19          9 a.m. to 6:30 p.m.   Shuster Hall 105

Wednesday October 20     9 a.m. to 6:30 p.m.   Shuster Hall 105

[All capitalization and punctuation (or lack thereof, as in the salutation) is copied exactly from the original.]

I guess there are two main things that I find puzzling about this system of handing out diplomas. Firstly, why does it take them a full five months after graduation to have the diplomas ready? I'm halfway expecting that this thing will be written by hand, maybe with a nice border and seal traced onto it in smudgy pencil for effect.

Seconly, and even more concerning to me, is the fact that the only times to pick up the diplomas are during two random weekdays in October. Don't they expect their graduates to have, you know... jobs? Or do they think that we all have nothing better to do than hang around the Bronx unemployed for five months after we graduate, poised and ready to swing by on a weekday and pick up a piece of paper that could easily be mailed out?

Surely they must have some system in place for those people who no longer live in NYC and have jobs that prevent them from traveling to another city on a Wednesday afternoon, right?

If you send someone to accept your diploma, the individual must present the following:

1. A signed letter of authorization from you specifying your proxy's name.

2. Proper identification for the proxy or yourself - copies of Lehman identification card, passport, state identification, or driver's license.

We wish you all the best for the future.

[And then there's a space for the registrar to sign it, or at least for a stamp or photocopy of his signature, but it's just blank.]

So, I guess they figure even if you are lucky enough to have a job, you probably graduated with someone else who is still unemployed? Good to know they have high expectations for their graduates.

Anyway, I'm not really sure if it's worth calling them and trying to convince them to mail it to me. On the one hand, I feel like I should probably have a copy of it for record-keeping purposes, but on the other hand, the last time I called them on the phone (which was for the fairly simple matter of changing my address, don't ask me why they can't have you do that online) I had to get transferred between four different mouth-breathers and the whole process took over an hour.

Why don't I ask Ms. L to do it, since she's still teaching at our school in the Bronx, you may ask? Because they misplaced a paper for her registration in our second semester, the ripple effects of which prevented her from properly registering for the following two semesters and from her being issued a diploma at all. She's still trying to sort it out, and it will probably take her long enough to earn a PhD in the meantime.