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>8( No House for the Pony!
11 years ago
Just an update on my PhD progress. I'm doing fine, but now I'm having trouble with my housing.
The University saw fit to not open the hall they pre-sold me access to for September. Now, I'm being told they don't have a space for me in housing and aren't sure what to do. I told them that I wasn't particularly concerned with their mishandling of the situation, it was the sort of thing I've come to expect from their housing staff. I did tell them, however, that I was very concerned with what they intended to do, as they've already charged me for the hall in advance.
They offered me a room in a freshman dorm, which is actually worth a quarter of what I paid for the other place, but claim they can't be sure they'll pay me back the difference.
Time to go be stereotypically Irish about it...
The University saw fit to not open the hall they pre-sold me access to for September. Now, I'm being told they don't have a space for me in housing and aren't sure what to do. I told them that I wasn't particularly concerned with their mishandling of the situation, it was the sort of thing I've come to expect from their housing staff. I did tell them, however, that I was very concerned with what they intended to do, as they've already charged me for the hall in advance.
They offered me a room in a freshman dorm, which is actually worth a quarter of what I paid for the other place, but claim they can't be sure they'll pay me back the difference.
Time to go be stereotypically Irish about it...
Make no mistake, I'm not going to make this pleasant for them at all.
This smells very awful.
What really burns me up about this is the fact that they act like it's my fault they failed to prepare the hall. I went in to talk about it and the woman was already yelling at me. I find it amazing that they think they can talk to me like that. I was ASKED to do my PhD here. I turned down a ton of other offers to come work with a specific supervisor. I don't get anything for free. I'm literally working my way through on campus, which by the way I should add that my students scored higher than any other entering students when they took their entrance tests. I don't mean to sound arrogant or full of myself, but I really don't think their position (and their performance at their job) entitles them to be hostile toward me at all.
I've come to expect this from campus office staff. They always have a chip on their shoulder. From the time I started community college till now it's been nothing short of amazing what they pull. At community college, I was unenrolled after the first week for no apparent reason. It was only when it came time for graduation that someone realized I wasn't a student. In undergrad I was told that I came into the department "between catalogs" and they didn't know what requirements I had to have to graduate, so rather than fixing it they just withdrew my diploma. For the Master's degree I turned in my thesis four separate times only to have the same idiot call me a day later each time and inform me that they never got my bound thesis and that I would be failing the program. That was a good one... I actually waited outside the building for her to call the final time, walked in still on the cellphone with her and yanked her desk drawer open and pointed at the 130 pages of my bound thesis in her desk.
All kidding aside, that really sucks. I think you need to go raise holy hell like they do back home and see if you can get them working on a real solution for you.
Won't that be a good profile for the university when I go to that conference next month? "Oh, so-n-so gave a nice talk. But he looks like he slept on a floor for the last month." And I'll walk over and go: "I did! They closed my hall with no warning and left the pony in the street. I had to move into my office." And they'll cringe and say: "What University did that?" XD
They'll see a picture of me in a box in front of the other college with "Free to a good home" on the side.