The Paperwork Black Hole at the University of South Alabama

So I decided last night that if I can get into the habit of blogging once per day, maybe it won't be so hard to keep it up once I'm there. So then I had to decide what I would write about today.

Today, I'm going to fill you in on a figure who will no doubt be making my life a living hell for the foreseeable future, and therefore will likely feature prominently here. I would like to introduce you to Ana Burgamy. Ms. Burgamy is the head of the so-called Office of International Education. It is her job to make sure that all paperwork is filled out in a timely manner and sent to the correct places. Unfortunately, Ms. Burgamy is terrible at her job.

Ask anyone who has ever had to deal with her, and they will likely regale you with tales of how their trip or even their graduation was put in jeopardy by an oversight on Ms. Burgamy's part. Whether it is misplacing paperwork, forgetting to send it in, or simply forgetting to alert you to the fact that it needed to be filled out in the first place, Ms. Burgamy seems to be an expert at making you sweat bullets right up until the moment the credit comes through on your transcript.

I thought I was doing pretty well with her. Maybe the people I'd talked to were wrong! Although, I had a hard time believing that when the Chair of the Foreign Language department encouraged me to make several copies of my paperwork, "because Ana will lose them." Still, I thought maybe I was just lucky. Not so. I received an email the other day from Ms. Burgamy, asking me for copies of, among other things, my passport and my application to the program at the University of Arizona. Had she told me I needed these things from the get-go, there would have been no problem. However, as of the email, guess where those things were. That's right. In Arizona. So the only way I could get her these things before about a week prior to our departure would be to ask the lovely people at Arizona (who actually know what they're doing) to fax back copies of the requested paperwork. Frustrating.

I honestly do not know how Ana Burgamy still has a job. Everyone that I have ever spoken with about her tells me how terrible she is. Just mentioning her name is sure to elicit groans, or at least a displeased expression. Even the Chair of the Department knows how awful she is. So how is she still employed?! It makes no sense!