Picking up from last time –
So, at Berklee, they state about a billion times over that if you don’t fill out paperwork in time, you won’t be going to the graduation ceremony. They say they’re never gonna assume anything. You have to fill out your intent to graduate.
Well, I definitely made sure not to fill out an intent to go to graduation in 2021, because I wanted the 2022 in-person ceremony.
And then I filled things out as soon as they came out for 2022’s ceremony. But then I got an email that I should’ve already walked.
Well, I knew I had a little technicality in my pocket, which I relied on, and thankfully got by on.
So, the rule is as long as you have 16 credits or fewer in the summer, you can apply to walk in May’s ceremony.
WELL!
Going into summer of 2022, I *barely* didn’t reach the threshold.
I had my 3-credit community college class that still hadn’t finished, so that didn’t count yet. I still had ~ 10 credits left of actual schooling I needed, AND, potentially the most important part of this technicality to work – I had a couple of “incompletes” that still needed to be accounted for, for some of my current grades.
(For instance, I had taken two saxophone lessons in one semester, because it was necessary to have two more to graduate. And I knew with final projects in my major, I didn’t want to have my toughest jury of the final level of an instrument I don’t play religiously anymore.
And the chair thought the best idea was to go ahead and take them both in the same semester, but not do both of the juries in the final week, and wait until the summer, so I had a little extra time for the final level (which I was happy to get on board with).)
[I also had an incomplete in a physical computing class, because there had been some issues trying to do all the physical computing stuff while remote. I ultimately did obviously finish and pass, but I was given a little extra time, just because of the nature of the pandemic, and a new skill, and shipping delay times, etc.]
So… yeah, some things in the incomplete world, a community college class not yet accounted for, plus the actual credits I needed.
Now, when you look at my transcript, you see I didn’t take 16 credits in the summer, and I still graduated. So at first glance, it looks like I met the threshold. But if you look at what was happening at the time, I just barely didn’t.
And my argument was basically, “you can’t have it both ways. You can have it so that had I applied at the time, I had more than 16 credits, so I did not meet the requirements and would have to walk in 2022, to tell me now that I was supposed to walk in 2021.”
Their argument was sort of “*light grumble grumble* I mean, obviously in this case, you were an exception and as long as you were passing your community college class and your professors expected that your incompletes would be successfully completed, you could’ve walked.”
Welp! I followed the rules! I didn’t ask for an exception because I didn’t want one. the rules say what the rules say. Where’s my cap and gown, baaaaaabyyyyyyyy?
(Obviously I was not that obnoxious.)
But yeah, I beat the system! I got my 2022 in-person graduation like 9 months later. And here we are! I’m sure I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow!