I’ve been strongly interested in re-training as a paralegal.
But getting ahold of the guy in charge of the program at my local university is absurd!
He doesn’t return calls, and he’s the only guy who can tell me what courses I still need! OUCH!
I forgot about this endless self-absorption in professors, in my years away. 
You can:
I’ve already taken courses that help towards this…however…the University has changed all its course titles & numbering systems, & I don’t know what I’ve got, under the new system.
I would make an appointment with a general student advisor. They will have the course equivilencies. I assume you’re not talking about transferring courses from a different college, but renumbering of courses in the same college, yes?
You can do 4 and 5 if you want as well.
Good luck! The single most useful thing I learned in college was how to deal with bureaucracy! How to fill out forms; how to wait in line; how to resolve snafus; how to get someone to help; etc. The math and literature and so on was nice to learn, but the skills in dealing with clerks at counters was absolutely invaluable.
(And, the bastards beat me in the end. I ended up not graduating, for want one one single class…which wasn’t on the university-level checklist which I had been using to schedule my classes. It turned out that the department had a slightly different checklist. I would have thought that the university-level list would have precedence over the department-level list, but, nope. So, I got 98 per cent of the way through to my degree…and was turned down at the end.)
(Bitter? You bet your ass I’m bitter! Bastards!) :mad:
Every department has their own specific requirements for graduation. Do you think you can take the courses for a degree in General Studies and qualify for a degree in Mechanical Engineering? Why did you not just take the one class you needed for graduation? Sounds duh to me.
Bosada: if you are able to visit the U during normal hours I suggest you schedule an appointment thru the departmental secretary with the chair of the department. Bring a copy of your transcript with you. It’s the easiest way to do something like this.
It occurs to me that figuring out things like this is precisely what paralegals are typically called upon to do. You should consider it a good object lesson in your new vocation.
Tried that.
It did get me a brief phone call, which was informative, but far from complete.
A colleague of mine was dean of students at McGill and when this happened he routinely okayed graduation anyway. He once told me that one of his biggest problems was academic advisors not knowing the asses from a hole in the wall. But if an advisor signed off that a particular program would lead to a degree and the student had followed the program, then the student got a degree. I suppose it had to be in good faith or something. I mean, you couldn’t get away with bribing an advisor into doing something utterly unreasonable.
Only one guy, at an entire university, can answer your question?
That sounds so not right. How is that even possible? What kind of uni is it?
If it’s true, you should call the deans office and say you can’t get the only person who can help you to return a phone call, or email, (you did try an email, right?)
I suspect the dean will produce a second person to offer you advice.
I’ve gotta echo this. There were half a dozen ways to find out what you needed for graduation at my college. If you logged into the system that reported grades, there was even an option to see what else you needed to graduate with your current major. That worked at the undergrad and graduate levels, btw. The academic advisors were mainly there to sign off on graudation requests, major transfers, and rarely, to ask which electives are appropriate for a course of study.
Unless you go to the tiniest university ever, there are many way to get this information, not just the one guy.
Yeah, this. If you become a paralegal you’re not going to be able to come here to ask for help for basic stuff like this. They’ll expect you to have the temerity to figure stuff out on your own.
Go to a trade school for paralegal training.
That’s an awfully pat answer given that the OP has already taken some courses at this university. Did you actually read the thread?
I don’t know your school, so I can only comment on what was available at mine, back in the day. In the main department building, there was a rack of forms and one of them requested a review of requirements met and still to be met for graduation. You only got to submit that form once, and they recommended submitting it a year before you intended to graduate.
Filling it out would get you an appointment with the department academic councelor. I didn’t even know the department had an academic councelor. Like Trinopus said, she knew the department requirements. In fact, she knew the general graduation stuff better than any of the general academic councelors I had ever been to. Even though I had to add a couple of classes that I hadn’t planned on (transfer students had an additional 2 units of phys/chem required - who knew that the rules for transfers were different?), she probably got me out the door with a degree a year earlier.
The way to find out about an academic review form or department councelor is to talk to the department clerks and secretaries. If they can’t point you to anything or anyone, ask if you should just petition for graduation now, so that you can be told what’s missing. If none of that is available, see if they know how to ambush “the guy in charge of the program.” Although one of the reasons he’s putting you off might be that he hasn’t figured out how to navigate the University’s changes, himself, yet.
I think his situation is different. My college went through a period where they renumbered all the courses ( we were merging as a system and wanted consistent numbers across campuses), so on your transcript would be old numbers and it wasn’t always clear how te new course names/numbers matched up with the old. I think he is trying to compare his old courses with the new numbering/naming system, not just checking what courses he needs for graduation.
For example, if you took Biochemistry before the renumbering it may have been CHE 104 and it will stay that way on your transcript. The new number might be CHE 112, or even BCH 112 (if was switched to a Biochem designator). Our graduation checklists were rewritten so they had both sets of numbers, but if you had a previous checklist, or if your University didn’t rework them, it may not be obvious how the classes line up.
HOWEVER, all academic advisors and most professors would have access to that information. As I said earlier, go to just about anybody on campus and ask for the course equivalencies and most will be able to help you. It doesn’t have to be that hard. Frankly, its probably on their website somewhere.
What did you try? You tried making an appointment to meet face-to-face but it just resulted in a phone call and not a meeting? You DID meet face-to-face but nothing got resolved and you had to move the discussion to the phone?
I agree with sinjin - you need to talk to someone in person. When I was in school I had to meet with 1 or 2 people every semester to get my schedule worked out (it was the rules) and while it was a pain I never had any scheduling snafus.
In order to make an appointment don’t try to get ahold of the person you need to meet with, instead get ahold of that person’s secretary.
And try via email- if the professor doesn’t have a secretary (not all do) email him directly. Most profs are much more responsive using email than phone calls. Unless you have a real technophoblc prof, email is a better bet than a phone call. The student advising center will be probably be a better bet and you can probably drop in to make an appointment.
You’re getting it wrong: The university counselors office had a checklist for graduation, in the department I wanted. I only later learned that the department also had a checklist…and it was different from what the university counselors office had listed.
i.e., the department didn’t bother to update the university as to their requirements. Bad inter-office communication.
As for taking the one class, yeah, sure, I’m gonna enroll in a university, at their fucking prices, to take one class? To quote yourself, sounds duh to me!
That’s what I think. If the OP can’t figure this out, and I think that it’s safe to say that thousands of people per year at that institution alone are able to manage, a career in a field where you are supposed to conduct very complicated and accurate research will doom him to failure.