Graduation is Official

It’s offi­cial. I’ve grad­u­ated.  The grad­u­a­tion cer­e­monies took place in late May, but I held my breath until the degrees were con­ferred.  Ear­lier this week, all for­mal­i­ties and paper­work were com­pleted, and my elec­tronic tran­script was updated:

The New School has an amaz­ingly inef­fi­cient bureau­cracy.  Prince­ton Review has ranked the under­grad­u­ate school, Eugene Lang Col­lege, as 2nd in the nation for Long Lines and Red Tape.  Just book­ing rooms for meet­ings of the Uni­ver­sity Stu­dent Sen­ate was labo­ri­ous, at best.  One snarky face­book group sug­gests that,“This school runs like an asth­matic duck with no legs.”  The admin­is­tra­tion is work­ing to rem­edy this, though until they do, I’ve learned to assume that paper­work will get lost and that instruc­tions on admin­is­tra­tive processes are largely inac­cu­rate. At a party this past week­end, another recent grad­u­ate joked about the night­mares she had about new and cre­ative ways the school could fum­ble for­mal­i­ties, pre­vent­ing her from receiv­ing her degree.  I was hav­ing sim­i­lar night­mares.  Now, I can sleep soundly.

As a dual-degree stu­dent on a five-year track to earn a Bach­e­lors of Art and a Bach­e­lors of Fine Arts, I felt the full brunt of the bureau­cratic inef­fi­cien­cies. The sep­a­rate admin­is­tra­tive bod­ies for Eugene Lang and Par­sons often dis­agree on what the require­ments for the dual-degree pro­gram are, and no one seems empow­ered to rec­on­cile them.  Indeed, of the ten or so peo­ple I know per­son­ally who started out at the New School in this pro­gram, only two oth­ers com­pleted it.  Most stu­dents are fully aware that the course-load to com­plete the degrees in the five-year time frame is sig­nif­i­cant.  They tend to drop out of one degree track upon con­fronting incon­sis­tent require­ments and admin­is­tra­tors pow­er­less to help stu­dents bal­ance the demands of two schools at once.  I thank my aca­d­e­mic advis­ers, Paul Ross and Brian Maasjo, for mak­ing the extra effort to help me through.  The dual-degree pro­gram is an amaz­ing edu­ca­tional oppor­tu­nity to pur­sue the fine arts and lib­eral arts with equal rigor.  I’m glad I found the allies to make it work.  This has been awe­some, inef­fi­cien­cies aside.  Given the New School’s comitt­ment to pro­mote inter­dis­ci­pli­nary edu­ca­tion, I sin­cerely hope that it will find ways to make the dual-degree pro­gram more acces­si­ble and efficient.