Time Travel Made Possible!

Oh, current and future scholars and students, though university bureaucracy seems like a paperwork and voicemail hydra, a labyrinth without David Bowie, or a brick wall painted with the blood of those who have smashed their heads against it, it can be mastered. I have done two supposedly impossible things at once - successfully navigated NYU bureaucracy and traveled through time. And how? Perserverence, grace, and NYU's insatiable hunger to have students with scholarships to point at.

This last year of school, I knew one thing: I wanted to go back to the Middle East. Syria was chosen for several reasons, chief among them cheapness. The goal became to have someone else pay for my going to Syria, with the fallback of fucking my loans and paying with my savings. I applied to two scholarship programs: NSEP Boren, which required me to still be a matriculated student, and Fulbright, which required me to have a B.A. No problem. If I got the former, I would just stay in school and spend senior year in Syria. If the latter, I would graduate a year early.

I got both, though I found out about NSEP Boren in early May, and Fulbright just a few weeks ago. So I had not graduated - again, no prob. I declined the Boren and put in to graduate at the end of the summer.

Problem. NYU's fall graduation is September 24th - after I need to be in Syria. Fulbright won't give me anything until they have final transcript stating that I have my B.A. in hand. Thursday of last week I made a few frantic emails and calls to the program director of Africa and the Middle East, the Dean's Office at my college, the registrar's office, and the advising office. The Dean was going to write a personal letter to Fulbright for me explaining the situation, because I was told back when I decided not to graduate in May that it would be, without a doubt, absolutely impossible to have a May graduation date after May.

"We can't go back in time," the advisor joked. Really?

They have gone back in time - for me. Friday apparently the dean, the registrar, and an advisor got together and decided to bend the laws of time and space and graduate me back in May 2007. I fucking rock. Happy graduation to me. Even without commencement, a speaker, a gown or tassle, I think I'll live.

It can be done! It can even be made to do the impossible. Though I think it helps if you win a national scholarship. Shit man, Fulbright is only free slurpees and a happy ending from fulfilling every my every need.