Educational Aggravation

I've never really dealt well with aggravation, especially from the educational establishment. I've jumped through a lot of hoops over the years to get my degrees, get/keep my teaching license and get a salary increase.

In order to get a pay raise after an advanced degree, one needs to take additional course work to qualify for the Plus 15, Plus 30 or whatever pay lane. These are simply credits beyond the normal degree requirement and are solely for a pay increase. For those of us in vocational, those credits can be used for the pursuit of another degree. In my case I was working toward an Associate Degree in  Manufacturing Engineering Technology while satisfying the requirements for a pay raise -the kill two birds thing. I ended up about 4 or 5 classes short of meeting my degree requirement when I made my pay grade requirement, however, so completing the degree was put on hold.

I was working on the degree from Purdue but they no longer offer the Associate Degrees. They are offered by my employer at the community college and after working there at least one year, adjunct faculty are entitled to fee remission. Next year with Obama Care kicking in, I'll be limited to teaching three classes per semester or else they'll have to give me health insurance. I'm good with teaching only three classes. I'm teaching four this semester and even though it's not hard work, in fact it's quite enjoyable, I'd just as soon do a little less. That would free up a little more time to work on projects or maybe finish up my Associate Degree.

With that thought in mind, I made an appointment to see the lady in charge of the manufacturing classes. I had copies of all my transcripts and she gave them a quick once over and then said I needed to apply to the college for admission and have my credits checked out by a lady in the registrar's office. So I went to see her yesterday. Nice lady but here's where the aggravation sets in. In order to have my credits evaluated, I need official transcripts sent to her. My copies are no good. Neither are the official copies that the college already has that I submitted as part of the employment process. In order to see what I need to finish my degree, then, I need to once again obtain transcripts from five different university's and apply to become a student. The nice lady then will enter the course numbers in a computer program that cross references the numbers with the community college numbers and those that don't jive will be sent to someone else to see how they plug in. After that I go back to the first lady I saw to see what I need to get the degree. They offer a distance learning degree which is what I had my eye on, actually, but that would then require a trip to Indianapolis. That's a long way to go just to have someone tell me I need five classes, or whatever the number is, to finish up the Purdue degree or a similar one from the community college. Especially since I don't need the degree for anything other than "might be nice to finish that up someday".

So even though I didn't get my answer as to the number of classes I would need, I did ultimately get my answer. Nope. I'm not going back. Just not worth the aggravation.