You thought I was kidding...

about the light posts. Wow, what a week. Hard to believe how busy I can be and yet not get anything done. So now I have some whining to do and then some cheering.

First, the whining. 

PSU is, for the most part, a pretty good school. I certainly enjoyed my time there and am ecstatic there is now a Native American Studies department, thank you Tim Garrison. Unfortunately, it came along too late for me to major in it or you all know I would have. 

But there are exceptions. 

For example, I cannot tell you how !@#$%^&* sick and tired I am of the run-around I get from them. 

I have more credits than I need for a degree but lack a couple required courses. Those courses, unlike all the others I took, have not been offered in the evenings that I can tell for about 4 years. 

So I have tried. And tried. And tried. To meet with my "advisor". I have taken vacation days for that express purpose. 

And still, to this day, never once met the guy. Not once. 

I have tried other channels to see if there is some way to complete my degree. I have gone to the ombudsman. Who told me to go the advisor. When I explained I have never been able to do anything other than get missed connections, he said I should try again.

Isn't the very point of an ombudsman to help with issues like this where you are at wits end and don't know what to do?

*Sigh*.

But I did have today off to go the the doctor and thought I would waste my time trying again. And, much to the surprise of...well...nobody, my schedule and his did not mesh, though at least this time I knew ahead of time from an e-mail exchange and did not waste time dropping by the school, finding a parking place, paying for parking, and so forth, and wasting days off fighting the nonsense of getting anywhere within 10 miles of downtown Portland. 

On the dark side....ONCE AGAIN, OUR SCHEDULES DID NOT MESH. 

grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!!!!!

I am never going to finish this degree. 

On the bright side, he is trying to work with me via e-mail. Unfortunately, a lot of the info he needs...what term did I start PSU, etc.... is stuff I plain and simple don't know. And when I say "I don't know" I mean to the nearest five years. 

There are basically 3 years that events were monumental enough for me to remember; 1995 when 6 friends/family members died, including Mom and Grandpa within a 6 month period. Oh, yeah, and I got married.

2003, when I got freedom...err, divorced.

2007 when I got married to a far better person.

That pretty much concludes it. 

I could not tell you closer than "4th, 5th, or 6th grade" when Alan and I started being friends, but I do know it has been well over 2 decades, and longer than that for Kyle and I, for example. But I could not put specific numbers on it. I don't do well with dates, epochs, etc. I just never found it important.

So here is what I can narrow my PSU start time down to: sometime after 1995, probably after 1998 but not definitely, and possibly as late as 2002 or even 2003. Or 2004. ish.

I just don't know.

And here is a dirty little secret; One of the questions is if I am pursuing a BA or BS. To be honest, I never knew or cared what BA or BS stood for...I think they are Bachelor of Arts or Bachelor of Science. Could not tell you the difference in requirements. I did look it up at one time, but did not find it important enough to remember which was which because it doesn't matter to me.

In fact, if I wasn't so close, I am not even sure the degree itself would matter to me. But I am that close.

And I just want to be done. But once again, for a variety of reasons...I am no closer. I will never graduate. Ever. It just won't happen for me. I suck. And now I am discouraged about it again. Sigh. Forget the happy part of this one, I no longer feel like writing it.