"Dear Dr. Collin Gifford Brooke, PhD '97,
We are currently in the final stages of editing your biographical information to be included in The University of Texas at Arlington Alumni Directory, but we need your help!"
Umm...yeah. Here's a little story:
When I was doing my PhD in the Education State Texas, not only did I earn less than 10K annually, but we TAs had the distinct privilege of being allowed to pay for our tuition out of that princely sum, a fact that kept me from actually registering for a number of the courses that I took. But we got by, I suppose. What really got me was that there was a rule that, in our final semester of dissertation work, we were required to enroll for 9 credit hours. My final semester, I had already taken a position at Old Dominion. I didn't need the credits for the degree, but hey, it was a rule. And since I was no longer a TA, and no longer living in TX, I got to pay out-of-state tuition for those unnecessary credits. At a time when I was trying to recover from living well below the poverty line for several years, I got to shell out another 3000 bucks.
And so, my "friends" from the UTA Alumni Office, the day I lift a single finger for you, much less sign my name to a check, will be the day after I receive my refund check from you for that last, unnecessary semester's worth of credits.
And not a day sooner. That is all.
