I ordered the five books I have to read, and I'm going to get through them all next week because the course starts the following Monday, and the more I have done ahead of time, the better for me. In the meantime, though, I have to gather a bunch of materials (paint samples, nicknacks, magazines, small boxes, objects of ephemera) and do some prep work. Supposedly there will be an email telling me how to connect to the online portion of the course to accomplish this prep work, and the email is due out by today.
I check the university email often. I am turning into the homestretch of this degree starting in September, and I'm anxious to keep in touch with the Powers That Be and make sure I don't screw up my credits by missing something important, like the Spanish translation test I have to pay for and pass sometime this fall. I cannot lag behind in the next ten months or I'll never make it through, so I do what I always do: I open my grad student email account and ...
Nothing.
I get that stupid beeping noise that happens when you try to get the computer to speed up and it clearly has no intention of doing what you ask of it. I try it again. And again. I keep bouncing to Outlook 365. I click on Outlook 365, assuming the new link will work. Still I get nothing but error messages, and now I cannot even sign out of this supposedly updated, new-fangled Outlook 365. I have tried to sign in no less than eight times in a minute.
I finally manage to get in through the school's own link from its home page and through the drop-down menu under some obscure tab. I slog through random Amazon emails because the company managed to get my email address when they duped me into thinking they would give students free shipping on text books. Yeah, all students except for me. (Amazon assholes.) I scroll and delete and delete and scroll and bob and weave until I am finally at the fresh, new university email. All one of it. I hope it's from the professor.
Sadly, it is not.
The email is from the school's IT department, informing everyone that their university email will be down, and to email them if anyone has any problems.
Uh.... I thought this was an institution of higher learning. Who the frik emails thousands of students to inform them that their email is not going to be working? I mean, seriously. Who does that shit? Are you stupid? That's like calling me on the phone to leave me a message that my phone isn't working. Dude, I know that; it's why I can't get your call.
So, here's to the IT idiots: Dudes, the email isn't working; this is why I can't get your email message that my email isn't working. Post a notice on your damn homepage that email isn't working.
I may not be a genius. but I'd like to think I'm relatively intelligent in an "able to wipe my own ass most of the time" kind of way, in the "my knuckles don't drag on the ground too often" grouping, in the crowd that is just a few steps above "wild boars chasing truffles" bandwidth.
But emailing the email messages that email isn't working with the email system? Dudes, that's just fucking retarded. (I emailed them and told them so.)
