Dear USC: Stop being such money grubbing jerks!

Seriously, USC, I’m a poor grad student and you have a $3.7 billion endowment.  How can you justify charging me $15 per electronic transcript, which requires no human do any work as it’s generated using an automated system and not printed out with ink or paper or any other consumable? (a transcript, I may add, I am only allowed to download three times and not allowed to share with anyone… thank goodness for printers and scanners.)

And then, on top of this, when I bought two tickets to my upcoming graduate student formal and your ticketing web system accidentally charged me twice, you only refunded me the ticket price (not the $3 per ticket “service charge”), despite the fact that it was your system that screwed up!  I mean, it’s only $6, but it’s my $6!  Which I could use to buy lunch or fund two writing days at Starbucks.

Needless to say, I can’t wait to be done with you.

A Writeous Day

I put my writing skills to a diversity test today:

1) Edited website copy (specifically the mission statement for the web design company I work for.)

2) Got an email from the Nicholl Fellowship people officially confirming they’d received my screenplay & payment (should hear whether or not I make the quarter finals by the end of July)

3) Put the finishing touches on the outline for my grad school thesis - and very first novel - and emailed it to my advisor. Fingers crossed!

Tomorrow I have to go get shots for my trip to Ecuador, which is slightly less fun… but ending the day with a Yelp Restaurant Week dinner at Luna Park with Amy!

The Definition of a Mailbox

According to dictionary.com:

mailbox
noun
1. a private box for delivery of mail
2. public box for deposit of mail [syn: postbox]

The English department at USC apparently does not agree. To them, dropping something off in a “mailbox” is the same as “coming by and handing something in in person during regular business hours.”

Essentially, I’ve tried (and failed) twice to hand in a short story I wrote to a competition they’re hosting. This frustrates me, so I’m doing the absolutely most productive thing I can think of and venting on the intrawebs.