My Javits fellowship required me to take summer graduate courses. Like most schools, I think, UW is pretty short on summer courses that count for graduate credit. I couldn’t, for example, take most of the beginning language courses available in summer, because they are below the graduate level.
The summer after master’s exams, I found myself at a loss for something to take. I had already taken Latin. Intensive Portuguese, which I would need for my Ph.D, was not being offered that summer. History, English, Comp Lit—none of them had anything of even vague interest or application on the graduate level.
Then my fiance David pointed out a summer course in Quichua, an indigenous language of South America. Well, why not?
("Because you could have done research!” you may say. Research credits need a sponsoring faculty member. I didn’t feel I could find one. Based on what happened to me later, I suspect I was right.)
So I went to my adviser (whom I will call Dr. B) to get my class pre-registration form approved. He was not happy with the idea of Quichua, but capitulated when I demonstrated there was nothing more relevant available.
I took Quichua. It was hard work, but I enjoyed the class and did well in it. Since the course took place during early summer session in order to leave time for a trip to Ecuador for several class members, I took advantage of the early end of class to visit my parents, whom I had not seen since I entered graduate school, almost two years earlier.
On August 2, I received a long-distance telephone call at my parents’ home from the director of the fellowships office (whom I will call Ms. C). She informed me that there had been a mixup with my registration; I had been registered as a special student rather than a graduate student. (This happened because I followed directions. The Quichua course screened its students, and the registration process that got me registered wrong was part of the screening process.)
That, however, wasn’t the major problem. The major problem was that I had unwittingly broken the university rules for maintaining my Javits fellowship. According to these rules, summer courses must be taken during the General Summer Session to count toward fellowship maintenance. My course took place too early in the summer. It didn’t count. At all.
Mind you, there was nothing wrong with the course itself or my progress in it. It counted for graduate credit, and it carried enough credits to satisfy all the other rules. It simply took place during the wrong summer session.
I thought this was ridiculous. I still do. Why on earth does it matter which summer session a course is given in? When I went to a woman in the Registrar’s Office a couple of weeks later to get my registration changed, she told me that she too hadn’t understood at first what (as she called it) “the big woo” about summer sessions was, since I had taken a course that was academically appropriate.
I had, according to Ms. C, two options. I could lose the fellowship (with no time left to find other funding). Or I could retroactively register for research credits during the correct summer session, take an Incomplete, and work off the Incomplete during the fall. I had a very busy fall—twelve graduate credits, the maximum load possible without applying to be granted an overload—planned, but I essentially had no choice but to take on the research credits, if I cared to eat during this next year.
I wrote a very stiff letter to Ms. C, to the dean who supervised her, and to the Javits Fellowship supervisor at the U.S. Department of Education. I made it quite clear in this letter that I didn’t expect my own situation to change. What I wanted was a change in the rule.
I received no response from the dean. I got an email from Ms. C acknowledging the letter, but saying nothing could be done for me (when I hadn’t asked that anything be done for me specifically!). The Department of Education official apparently called the university and was assured the situation was being handled. He sent me an email to that effect. The rule has not been changed.
I replied to Ms. C’s email with a bitter joke that in my (somewhat disordered) imaginings I hoped might defuse the situation a little. I tried to put her in my shoes; I asked her to imagine that her boss, one of the assistant deans, suddenly required her to work several hours of overtime each week due to her breaking a rule she hadn’t known existed and the breaking of which did no one any harm whatever.
I was angry. I was frustrated. I poured out my anger and frustration on an Internet bulletin board system known as Heinous BBS. I told my story (truthfully, if somewhat emotionally) in one section of the BBS, and in another, I posted the same silly joke I had sent Ms. C. I did an amazingly stupid thing; believing that no one would know whom I was talking about, I did not change the names of Ms. C or the dean as I posted the joke.
Unbeknownst to me, Ms. C’s daughter also frequented the BBS. When she saw my posts, she went straight to her mother. Certainly, my post on the BBS was under a BBS pseudonym, and I kept my real information hidden, but her mother had a paper trail tying the joke to me.
She sent me email (which I no longer have) demanding a written apology to her and to the dean and requiring that I remove all reference to the incident from the BBS. Moreover, I was required not to use their names to speak of the situation to anyone else, ever. If I broke these terms, Ms. C told me she would haul me up before the Dean of Students on charges of non-academic misconduct. Penalties for this, as at most universities, range from slaps on the wrist to dismissal from the university.
I complied with Ms. C’s requirements. She had me thoroughly checkmated; pursuing my legitimate complaint would simply have enabled her to use my silly joke against me. Moreover, I didn’t feel I would find support anywhere else in the university if I tried to fight the charge; my department, given the trouble I caused over MA exams, certainly wouldn’t defend me. So I erased the posts I had made on Heinous (which is why I can’t put them here). I wrote the apology (which, unfortunately, I can’t find). And until now, I have kept my mouth shut about the whole affair. Now that the Dean of Students holds no terrors for me, I feel free to speak.
This contretemps scared me badly and shook my belief in the university. I spent a couple of weeks not sleeping and not eating decently. I was very close to leaving. I decided that I was going to forego my final year of Javits eligibility, just to get out from under the heel of the Fellowships Office (although that is not what I told Ms. C about it, for reasons I hope will be obvious). It is difficult to measure the economic consequence of this decision, because there are several different ways to think about its monetary value, but for what it’s worth: the yearly stipend was $14,400 and the fellowship paid all my tuition.
I did decide, though, that all in all, there were worse punishments than just an extra project. I even had one in mind, suggested by a recent thread on the Medieval Iberia email list: a prose translation of the Vida de Santa María Egipcïaca, a well-known Old Spanish example of hagiography. Someone on MEDIBER-L had asked if such a translation were extant, wishing to use it in an undergraduate course. As far as anyone knew, no such translation existed.
So I went to Dr. B, who had just been named chair of the department, to see about the research credits. He flatly refused to be responsible for any project of mine, and informed me bluntly that nothing I did, regardless of its quality or relevance to my education, would ever cause these fiat-of-bureaucracy research credits to be counted toward my Ph.D. He pooh-poohed the idea of a translation, and suggested that since I obviously had an interest in Quichua, I should do some kind of Quichua project, which could be reported to a professor in another department so that all he would have to do would be to rubber-stamp the grade.
Dr. B was my adviser, I should reiterate. I had explained quite clearly just a few months before that I was not particularly interested in Quichua, but it seemed to be the best way out of a bad situation. He had forgotten as if I’d never said a word, and his out-and-out rejection of both my project suggestion and my willingness to undertake a project meaningful to my graduate career hurt me a great deal.
I was too scared and too witless to ask at the time just why he was so picky about the project, if it didn’t count for anything anyway. It is my belief, however, that Dr. B shunted me out of my intended project simply to avoid the work of overseeing and grading it.
When the project, a retread of work examining Spanish loanwords in the Huarochiri manuscript, was complete, he again refused to grade it or even look at it. I presented the project to someone in the Anthropology department, who reluctantly graded it, and Dr. B rubber-stamped the grade. (The grader’s reluctance should not reflect badly on him. To the last, I hoped Dr. B would relent toward the project. When he didn’t, after I had turned it in to him, I had to scramble to find someone else to grade it; it was more than mean of me to put the grader in that position.) At this point, I changed my intended specialty from medieval literature to linguistics in order to escape Dr. B, and Dr. A became my new adviser.
I cannot understand why a graduate department should wish to blunt my desire to do original and valuable work, but that was nevertheless the result. This episode marked the last time I ever tried to start a project on my own volition. I might add that this was a significant departure from my undergraduate experience, during which several professors encouraged me to research, write, and present papers and projects.