Looks like I spoke too soon in the matter of my application for a part-time Masters degree. I should have known better than to try to rise above my station. The battle of intellectual proof was one I was prepared for, but I’d forgotten the grinding certainty of bureaucracy.
They have replied, not with a decision on whether I can apply with my qualifications (or lack of qualifications, depending on which way you look at it) but with a demand to see my certificate within seven days.
Well, you know me. I have a house full of junk. How am I going to find a certificate within seven days? I only remember seeing it once or twice in the last 35 years. I’m also moving house, as you know, and have some things in storage.That might include my certificate. I honestly don’t know.
For one thing, they don’t need a certificate to give me a decision on whether they consider my qualifications to be adequate. For another – seven days! Why seven days? This country is going to the dogs. Ever since lockdown all the petty tyrants, the jobsworths and the wannabe dictators have been making up rules. You want proof, fine. But demanding it within seven days is not realistic. And finally, do they not think that if I were making a fraudulent application I would just use desk top publishing to knock up a fake degree certificate for a 2:1 in History from a Southern African University which closed down 20 years ago under the restructuring programme . . .
. . . no, forget that. The trouble with such flights of fantasy is that they don’t sound too good when introduced to the court in evidence. Let’s just say that it would not be too difficult, if you were that way inclined, to produce a realistic degree certificate from somewhere that no longer exists.
Sometimes I wonder why I bother being honest.
Photos are from August 2017 – apart from that they are unconnected to today’s blog.