Retraction

Remember everything I said about how excited I was to be working with Sam Freedman, my master’s project adviser?

Well, forget it.

Late Monday night, I happened to check my online class schedule and was quite surprised to find that a different name appeared where his had been. And the new name was of someone I’d never heard of, let alone requested.

(Back in July, we had to submit a ballot indicating our preferences for specific classes and professors. I spent an entire weekend reading past student evaluations of these classes and very carefully submitting my choices. For master’s advisers, we were instructed to list at least ten choices on the ballot. Freedman had been my first choice. The person whose name now appeared on my schedule hadn’t cracked my top ten.)

Now, we’d been told that there had been some glitches with student schedules, which are all entered manually (no, I can’t explain why), and that we shouldn’t freak out if we saw something weird. So, I didn’t freak out.

At first.

The next morning, I checked again, in the vain hope that things had changed. The system is refreshed overnight, so I thought there was an outside possibility that the glitch would be corrected in the normal course.

It hadn’t been.

So, I headed up to school and buttonholed our Dean of Students and Assistant Dean of Students before that day’s all-class lecture began. I explained the situation and asked, politely, for an explanation. Here’s a rough approximation of our conversation:

Me: I happened to check my class schedule last night, and my master’s project adviser seems to have been changed. Do you know what might have happened?

Deans: Well, it turns out that some people aren’t advising this semester after all, and others are taking fewer advisees than we had anticipated, so we had to make some changes.

Me: And when you made the change to my schedule, would you have referred back to the preferences I submitted on my ballot back in July?

Deans: At this point, we would have assigned you to whomever was available.

Hmm.

That’s not really satisfactory, is it?

So then it gets worse.

Up at the front of the room, the Dean of Students says to the whole class something like this (as nicely as possible, but still):

We’ve had some questions about changes in master’s advisers. When we made the original assignments back in July, we didn’t necessarily have the most up-to-date information from some of the faculty, because many of them had been away since the end of the spring semester and weren’t going to be back until August or September. So in some cases we’ve have had to make changes based on updated information about their availability.

The part he left out:

Oh, and by the way, we made these changes unilaterally and without notice, so you might want to check your schedule to make sure you aren’t one of the unlucky ones.

Yes, we could have waited to make the master’s adviser assignments until we had all of the information we needed, especially since you won’t even be meeting with your advisers until after Labor Day.

Or we could have warned you up front that the assignments were subject to change.

Or we could have contacted you personally if a change had to be made in your particular case, so that you’d (a) know about it, (b) have an opportunity to ask questions and advocate for one of your alternate choices, and (c) still feel somewhat warm and fuzzy about the J-school administration.

But we didn’t.

And did I mention that the drop/add period started at 7:00PM on Monday night (approximiately four hours before I noticed the switcheroo)? Or that drop/add requests are handled on a first-come, first-served basis? (Upshot: I’m pretty well screwed.)

Now I have been trying rather gamely (with frequent prodding from Zach) to bear in mind that I am the student in this relationship, which means fully relinquishing the academic-administrator hat I wore for so many years. This has been an ongoing challenge since I first decided to apply to Columbia because, despite the universally acknowledged excellence of the program, there have been more than a few indications that the administration was not running the tightest of ships. But I’ve tried to be very Zen about the whole thing and not get overly worked up about even the not-so-minor incidents. But, of course, each successive incident reminds me of the others, and my hard-won easygoing-ness (yes, yes, I know that’s a contradiction in terms) has been increasingly difficult to maintain.

So I am resolved to meet with the Dean of Students to provide some feedback about my various less-than-satisfactory experiences. He seems like a really good guy, so I am hopeful that it will be a worthwhile conversation and not an exercise in futility.

In the meantime, I consulted with Professor Padwe, who confirmed that I should, in fact, do my best to switch to a third adviser and gave me lots of helpful guidance on who that adviser should be. Of course, of the seven possibilities we discussed, one isn’t advising at all, five are fully booked, and one “may have space,” according to the Assistant Dean.

So I put in my drop/add request late Tuesday afternoon and, theoretically, have to hope for the best. (Where “hope for the best” includes checking my online class schedule every day because -- wouldn't you know it? -- we won’t be notified if or when our drop/add requests are granted. Nice, huh?)