Here I sit, wrapped in a blanket, with the table heater on and eating my breakfast: toast with cream cheese and turkey. That's about as close as I can get to a bagel sandwich here. ;) Anyway, I realize it's been a while since last I posted. I guess I've been caught up in the back-from-vacation bustle of things.
Aside from the normally rough transition back to work, I received a letter the other day from the Ministry of Education here in Spain. Some of you know that I applied for the equivalent Spanish degree of my BA from the US. Well, the letter was a notice that after having considered my application for 14 months (the woman originally said it would be between 12-18! so this is fast.) they've decided that my studies are insufficient in just about everything except one requirement: Latin American literature.
I was supposed to notify them in writing within 15 days if I would like to present alegaciones against their ruling and the subsequent missing documents that supported my case. I have appealed to them in writing as of yesterday and am in the process of collecting the "missing" documents; something that just really bothers me since they're not MISSING at all--no one ever asked for them to begin with!
Said documents are apparently a cross between catalog course descriptions and the class syllabus. This is apparently something totally normal for a Spanish University to have, but as I knew would happen, when I spoke to the Registrar's Office at Pacific, they were confused, bewildered and hadn't a clue what exactly it was that I needed. The best they said they could do for me was print off the catalog pages, but the man from the Ministry specifically said that wouldn't do.
The only good thing about all this is that Pacific is small and I have a lot of people there willing to help me. This is a similar situation to the hell of paperwork I had to wade through for my marriage licence (yes, unfortunately this is fast becoming a trend in my new life), except that people on one end of things are willing to work with me this time.
I was blown away when, after explaining the situation to an ex-professor from Pacific now living in Spain (she's Spanish), she suggested I simply make up the documents. When I pointed out they needed to be "official", she just recommended cutting and pasting the seal from the webpage to a word doc. and printing it off myself (!). Somehow that just doesn't seem right, fair, or honest to my little American self; but I can see where she, in her Spanish mentality is coming from. There's so much bullshit paperwork here that people resort to all kinds of shenanigans to get through it. The idea is, "They're complicating my life for nothing. None of this really matters, so why stress or take it seriously?"
An interesting and somewhat disturbing cultural difference when you think that that's the way pretty much EVERYTHING works in this country. And then they wonder why corruption is rampant!
Okay, got to run to school.
Besos.
p.s. cross your fingers for my paperwork mess!
Well, as a recovering member of the American Government bureaucracy I can feel your pain :( One disease common to all bureaucracies is the workers often really don't care about the issue. Their job becomes merely processing paper. Therefore their maddening inefficiency has no adverse effect on their job, in fact it is job security. Of course there are always some folks committed to service, but I fear the overwhelming norm is otherwise. Hang in there mi hija!
ReplyDeleteDaddy
how's it going so far? I still have some syllabi, so if I can help, let me know (tho I suspect that you can still contact all the profs that we shared).
ReplyDeleteY'know, making up docs isn't so bad, especially if you actually did the work. Really, think of it as making a portfolio of the work you did to demonstrate to other people that you've done it.