Graduation meetings pile on stress for seniors

By Nate Adams
Collegian Editor
February 20, 2008

With graduation a mere three months away, the thoughts of one-fourth of the campus are on the future. The cold, hardened veterans of La Salle’s student body have their minds wrapped around where they’ll find jobs, where they’ll rest their heads at night and who is going to pay for the heaping piles of student loans that will undoubtedly be showing up on the doorstep in the coming weeks.

We’re not out of the woods yet, however, and there is still one hurdle to overcome. One giant, intimidating, stressful hurdle. That hurdle is meeting with the assistant dean.

For those lucky souls not in the know, before students can graduate, they have to set up a meeting with the assistant dean of their department where transcripts will be reviewed, credits counted and graduation either granted or denied.

For those hoping to graduate this May, this process might as well be the separating of sheep and rams.

It doesn’t help, of course, that the e-mail notification for this meeting comes in a bright red, bolded e-mail that makes the meeting sound as important and rare as an audience with the pope. It’s as if the word of God himself has been sent to your e-mail inbox, and heaven forbid you don’t answer the call.

Naturally, once I received this e-mail, I waited until the last possible moment to act on it.

But, alas, time waits for no man, and I eventually set up the appointment to meet my maker. Of course, it didn’t hurt that my mother got wind of the e-mail. Hell hath no fury like Mama Adams.

As I climbed the steps to the Administration Building, all sorts of improbable scenarios started to jump into my head. The rational, cool thinking side of my brain knew that I would be fine. I have taken all my core courses, completed more than enough credit hours and I would be A-OK to walk the stage and toss my mortarboard in the air.

Of course, none of that mattered. I sat in an office, waiting for my execution. “Oh, sorry Nate,” I imagined a bridge troll saying as it read my transcript from a scroll. “You’re one credit hour short of graduating this year. Instead, you’ll be dipped in honey and rolled in fire ants.”

I must have looked pretty stupid scratching myself all over as I met the assistant dean.

Thankfully, my dean was not a bridge troll, quite the opposite in fact. Her name was Sally Rooney, and she was a sweetheart of a woman who seemed generally interested in me and getting me out of school on time. We chatted politely as she went over my transcript, and she was legitimately happy to send me on my way to May.

In fact, the only time she was anything but a big ball of good vibes is when I told her that several of my peers were intimidated by this meeting (I mean, not me, of course. Psh, please, Sally, don’t be silly). “Well, you’d better tell them to get in here,” Ms. Rooney said to me, lowering her eyes. Um, yes ma’am.

If the walk to the Administration Building was a treacherous walk full of self doubt and over-imagined torture scenarios, the walk back to my room, armed with the knowledge that I’ll be walking with my fellow classmates, was a light-hearted skip through the gumdrop forest.

For you seniors out there feeling a little queasy about the meeting, fearing the worst, take it from me: You don’t have anything to worry about. Unless you’ve been dropping two classes a semester since freshman year. Then you’re pretty much pooched.

adamsn1@lasalle.edu