Monthly Archives: September 2010

USFiasco

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I’ve been doing mini-rants on my Twitter/Facebook feeds about a letter I got from the University of South Florida for the last hour or so. I have decided to encapsulate my frustrations and conclusions here to spare anyone additional spam.

I received my Associate of the Arts degree from St. Petersburg College in December of 2005. I graduated with a GPA of 3.241. Shortly after graduation I applied for admission to the University of South Florida, but I never actually finished the application process. Life got a bit on the busy side, and I let things slide for a few years.

I recently applied again, hoping to finally start working on my Bachelors degree in the Spring. A few days after applying I went to check on the status and was greeted with a “you will be notified by mail of our decision.”

This is never a good sign. I’ve heard that statement far too many times when applying for credit. It always means “we’re telling you no, but we aren’t going to tell you to your face. We have to put this in WRITING.”

So the letter arrived today. Sure enough, I have been rejected. Why? I have completed less than 60% of the classes I have attempted in my post-secondary career. When I first read this I was livid. I ran the numbers and they didn’t add up. I was sure they had made a mistake.

They did not.

I have left a message with the Dean of Admissions, but after pulling transcripts and doing all the math myself here is what I have come up with. I have attempted 135 hours. I have completed 79. This means I have completed 58.51% of the classes I have attempted. In order to be eligible for admission to USF I need to pass 7 more credit hours worth of classes before I am eligible for admission. I am going to discuss this with them and get definite numbers, but this looks to be the position I am in.

I am angry, hurt, frustrated, and annoyed by this. I will not, however, let it defeat me. I still need to get my foreign language requirements in. I have a few grades on my transcript that are F’s that do not need to be taken for my degree. I have some classes I can take to give them what they want, and I will do so.

I will be a USF student one day. I will get my degree. I will not let this hold me back from improving myself.

I won’t.

UPDATE (3:58 PM EST)

Well….This sucks a big bag of flaccid manhood.

Apparently USF counts all attempts toward taking a class in figuring out your attempted to completed ratio, even if you’ve taken the class over again for credit. Saint Petersburg College does not, so those numbers weren’t being figured in to the ones I was working with.

Here’s what I’m facing with USF…

Total hours attempted – 143

Total hours completed – 76

Percentage – 53%

In order to be CONSIDERED for admission under the standard guidelines I need to take and pass 23 credit hours worth of classes. In order to guarantee it, though?

Another 60.

Anything less than 67% requires review by the admissions panel.

I have been told that I would be accepted at any of the other USF campuses. The major I wish to take is only offered at the USF Tampa campus. My only course of action at this point is to write a letter of appeal to the director of undergraduate admissions.

I know for a fact that I can get 16 hours of work in that I NEED to have done for my BA at SPC. Beyond that I am unsure.

This requires some additional thought and decision making.

Thar she blows!

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You discover some interesting things about yourself when you are trying out a colon cleansing program for the first time. You’ll find out whether or not you have enough fiber in your diet, whether you’re drinking enough water, and (perhaps most interestingly) that you’re fully capable of taking a close look at the toilet to see if anything interesting is going on down there. When you’re doing this as a review for a web site, you’ll also find out that you’re going to have to write about that particular part of the experiment.

The things I do for you people.

I have completed my first two weeks of the DrNatura Colonix Advanced Internal Cleansing Program. From the point on the post may, at times, devolve into some slightly graphic discussion. I’m not going to get too terribly detailed in those sections, and as I promised before there will be no pictures, but I figured it was wise to get that particular disclaimer out of the way before we went on.

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Am I clean inside?

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We’re back!

It took about a week after we got home to fully recover from the utter and complete madness that was Dragon*Con, but your staff here at ShrinkGeek has finally caught up on their sleep and gotten over whatever strain of Con Crud that was running around this year. Unfortunately, for me, there’s still a bit of lingering ick simply due to the fact that, despite my intention to do otherwise, I made some very poor dining choices while we were at the convention. In my defense I really didn’t have a heck of a lot of time to make sure the food I was eating was healthy, though. I was one of the Assistant Directors for the Massively Multi-Player Online Role-Playing Game track and I actually worked 55 hours over the course of the convention. It was fun, but hectic, and when I did have time to grab food I was more concerned with how quickly I could get it than how many calories I was consuming.

The upshot of all this is that I ate a lot of food over Labor Day weekend that I don’t normally eat and I ate way too much of it. I can definitely feel the impact of all that grease, salt, and fat. I’m sluggish, kinda bloated, and my mana bar is almost completely depleted. Now that my schedule is more or less normal again, I really need to buckle down and re-focus on taking care of my body.

Amusingly enough, I got an offer right before we left for the convention that may help me do just that.

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