Ben on TV

Penn and Teller have a new TV show where they feature random cool things, and Ben's lab was recently on it!



You can see Ben for almost a full second at 1:13. Science!

Look what finally came!

And it's not even on tracing paper, although it is a little creased.

It only took six months to get here and they paid me a surprise $3000 for the inconvenience, so I have no complaints :)

I must be really charming...

... because this morning I had an email waiting for me from the director of the fancy private school we visited yesterday, asking where to send his $1,000 donation to TFA!

AND I got another random check in the mail from Lehman! This one's only for $60, but still... they can't stop paying me for having put up with them for two years! I'm getting fonder and fonder of my alma mater every day...

What???

I got something in the mail today from Lehman. It was too small (and way too quick) to be a diploma, so I figured it was some sort of junk. I opened it anyway, and inside was a check for $3,390.

It's made out to me, and even has my SSN on it so I know it's not intended for someone else with my name. But all it says by way of explanation is "Student Stub - Semester 02/2010." I thought maybe somehow AmeriCorps (which paid my tuition as part of me being in TFA) had overpaid my semester bill, but when I logged into the Lehman student portal the "amount due" and "amount paid" were equal for all my semester billing statements. I am very confused.

As tempting as it is to keep the money without asking questions, I feel obligated to call the bursar's office on Monday and figure out what's up. I have a strong suspicion that this is another mistake on their end, but still...  wouldn't it be great if I'm actually supposed to keep it? It would more than make up for all the nonsense I've dealt with from them over the past two years!

Seriously?

After several aggravating phone calls with Lehman, I finally got something in the mail from them today. I was cautiously optimistic, until I opened it:

Diploma Mailing Request

Name:
SSN:
Address:
Degree:
Graduation Date:

If you wish to have your diploma mailed, please enclose with this form:

• A self-addressed and prepaid priority mailer from the US Post Office (cardboard 11.5" x 9.5")
• Two copies of identification with a signature and picture. Include a copy of social security card.

If your diploma is lost in transit, you must pay a replacement fee of $15.

This is kind of ridiculous, right? It takes them six months to get it together enough to have diplomas, and then if you haven't been hanging around in the Bronx unemployed the whole time you have to go to the post office, buy a special priority mailer, make and send multiple copies of sensitive documents through the mail, and hope they don't manage to fuck up because otherwise you'll have to repeat the whole process over, plus an extra $15. Given that they claimed to have sent me this form three times before I actually got it once, I am extremely skeptical of me not having to pay that $15.

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.

The Difference

Its been awhile since I complained about the quality education I received from Lehman College, but I got something in the mail today that made me laugh:

I had actually sort of forgotten that I technically earned a Master's, since it's been THREE MONTHS since I turned in my thesis and I haven't heard anything from Lehman in the meantime.  So while MIT can turn around a few thousand fancy-looking diplomas in the less than three weeks between the end of spring term and graduation, it takes Lehman over three months to send its graduates an apparently type-written piece of paper, along with the a note that I will be "notified by mail about distribution of diplomas [in] approximately three months."

Was MIT just exceptionally efficient at diploma production, or is Lehman just exceptionally pathetic?