lizrael update

A degree in degree-getting.

So a couple weeks ago I shared the latest Bar Ilan update that standing between me and my diploma was a ptur in English.

One moment; allow me to rephrase that…

Approximately one fortnight ago, yours truly revealed an update on the outstanding situation regarding the university of Bar Ilan, where the accomplishment of a Master’s Degree was halted due to the matter of an exemption in the English language.

After over a month of bureaucratic ridonkulousness (yes, that is English!) I managed to get through to a wonderful angel named Simone, originally from the continent of North America, who speaks - you got it - English. Helpful since everyone else I spoke to was leading me to the wrong offices or telling me they’d call back someday.

Yesterday I checked my mailbox - and lo and behold! - received myself a nice big envelope with my completed transcript and ishur that my degree has been completed. I should be getting the official diploma at a ceremony whoknowswhen, 2010. Or maybe 2017?

No  matter. It’s only taken four years. I can now register for my extra tax credit.

And start my PhD.

Staaaam.

Bar Ilan update.

Haven’t heard from the Bar Ilan front in a while, have you? Were you starting to lose hope? Did you think I gave up?

Well, honestly, there’s been nothing to update. I finished taking courses a year ago. I finished my last paper months ago.

Then why is there no degree hanging proudly on my bathroom wall?

I wondered the same thing a month ago. I started calling administrative offices to find out. What did I find out? What was the missing piece?

A ptur in English.

That’s an exemption for needing to take an advanced English course, folks. Required because, granted, most university students here are not native English speakers. And all you need, at the most basic level, as an immigrant native English speaker, is to have studied your first degree at an Anglo university. You just submit a photocopy of your university diploma, and boom, you’re done with that.

Yes, I did do this five years ago when I applied. Somebody out there must have made an ‘oops’ at some point in the 34856203864 years it’s taken to finish the degree.

So, that’s what I’m working on. Not an overdue paper. Not a thesis.

An exemption in English.

The lizrael update I’ve been waiting for.

Don’t know about you, but I can speak for myself, my husband, my family, some of my closer friends, and probably some coworkers and ex coworkers when I say that this is the lizrael update I’ve been wanting to share for a long, long time… In fact, I can pinpoint the time. It would be here.

But now I can finally say: I’ve handed in my very last graduate school work. It was actually a couple weeks ago, but it was too good to believe on the spot so I’ve been waiting until it sank in.

Don’t get me wrong; I have no confirmation except my own calculations and last year’s assurance from a department secretary that my student file is ready to be stamped This one’s good to go. I also want to know that my final internship project has passed. As far as I know, I’ve handed everything I can possibly hand in, taken all credits and finals, and paid (or had others pay) all monies to complete my requirements. If this is truly the happy ending, then my official graduation won’t be until the end of this academic year.

But, with a little optimism uncharacteristic of an Israeli student, I will say:

No more teachers, no more strikes.

No more Minhal Studentim hikes.

Some people have already asked me, “What are you going to do now?” And in my head I’m replying, “Think up my next academic feat,” while my mouth brings forth, “Birth a baby and perhaps raise it.”

Progress.

Here’s how you know you’ve developed as a student over years of Israeli grad school:

First semester of Israeli grad school, three long years ago, you were told to write an end-of-term paper using the proper guidelines of the university’s thesis policy. You scrambled to find it after being told it was ’somewhere on the website.’

After hours of searching through the terribly laid-out university website, you find the downloadable pamphlet, print out all 42 pages, staple it, and then begin to panic. Obviously it’s a Hebrew document. But it’s so official. So wordy. So haughty.

You sit and struggle and manage to pick up whatever little pieces you deem most important and leave the rest behind; you’ll worry about it later when you really need it for the end-of-degree project paper.

And now, three years later, you’ve come dangerously close to the deadline of the last project you’ll have to do in this degree. You’ve got 40-60 pages to write, and somehow have to squeeze that in between work and the holidays before the back-to-school date. You’re not too bothered by it though and the time has come to start.

You dig out that old paper-writing manual and brush it off. You flip through the three-year-old pages and scan for details. Suddenly, there’s so much more to learn here. When to use quotes, when to skip lines. When to spell out terminology in English instead of transliterating in Hebrew (though, that’s not your problem).

This pamphlet of guidelines is quite pleasant at this point, like an old friend who you’ve been weary of but have now learned they like to bake cookies. The 42 pages that seemed scary before seem like just enough. You settle into your chair and begin.

————————————————

On second thought, that’s not developing as a student over years of Israeli grad school; it’s actually more like being the student you’ve always been, but developing as the speaker of a second language, making it your own through pamphlets, thick and thin.

Lizrael Update: school keeps on truckin’.

I know it’s been a while since I properly updated with the whole fancy ‘lizrael update’ subject line. And this is likely to be quick, since it concerns school.

Some days I’m soclose to finishing my remaining projects (which these days numbers three) and some days I feel like I will never finish this thing. Fortunately, today was a soclose day. I’ll be done with one paper by the end of the week, starting a new one (ahem… two years over due one) after Shavuot and then I have my big fancy internship project to work on and then write up.

Of course, there is also the official ‘course gishur’ (mediation course) to take, which I still need to sort out dates and details for.

No more classes, no more books… but a lot between me and accomplishing the degree.

The final final.

I don’t want to make promises, because you just never know over here… But I’m %99.99 sure that I just finished my last ever final at Bar Ilan University…

…And I totally rocked it. Take that, Ethical Dilemmas in Mediation!

Here’s a portrait of the calm before the final:

It’s not the end of my degree, of course. I’ve got a lot more work to do and the mediation certification course to take. But I’m enjoying this small triumph until I start writing the next paper…

Stop playing with my heart.

Amidst my packing the apartment, my husband calls to me: “Looks like you got too sad too early.”

Lecturers’ strike ends

“The Coordinating Council of the Faculty Associations and the Treasury have come to an agreement ending the 89-day strike which has threatened the academic school year.

After marathonic overnight negotiations, the parties have agreed to sign an agreement outlined by Ofer Eini, Chairman of the Histadrut Labor Federation and detailing the various wage increases and lecturers’ pension rights.” (ynet)

Bar Ilan University has shut its doors…

…and it’s libraries, laboratories and offices.

I just got a notice; if you’re a student it might interest you:

בשל שביתת המרצים הבכירים הופסקה באופן מעשי פעילות ההוראה של הסגל הבכיר באוניברסיטאות זה כ- 87 יום

לאור העובדה שהצדדים למו”מ אינם מצליחים לגשר על הפערים, הגיע ועד ראשי האוניברסיטאות למסקנה האוניברסיטאות אינן מוכנות לקבל מהסגל האקדמי הבכיר שירותים חלקיים.

לפיכך החליט ועד ראשי האוניברסיטאות לסגור את האוניברסיטאות ובהן גם את אוניברסיטת בר אילן, החל מיום א’ י”ג בשבט תשס”ח 20.1.2008 בשעה 8:00 ועד לתום השביתה.

על-מנת שלא לפגוע בלימודיהם של הסטודנטים שלמדו בסמסטר הראשון, החליט ועד ראשי הא וניברסיטאות לאפשר קיומם של הבחינות, למרות שהקמפוס יהיה סגור לכל פעילות אחרת.

לאור האמור, כל הבחינות יתקיימו במועדן כפי שפורסם.

ייתכנו שינויים במיקום חדרי הבחינות והנכם מתבקשים לעקוב אחר מיקום הבחינה בלוחות המודעות בכניסה בניין נייגל 507 ביום הבחינה.

לידיעתכם: ספריות, המעבדות, חדרי ההוראה, המחלקות האקדמיות וכל היחידות המינהליות תהיינה סגורות.

מוקד מידע טלפוני: עומד לרשות הסטודנטים בטלפון: 03-5318508

ציבור הסטודנטים מתבקש לעקוב אחר ההודעות שיפורסמו בכלי התקשורת ובאתר האינטרנט של האוניברסיטה.

הנהלת האוניברסיטה מקווה שיווצרו במהרה התנאים שיאפשרו חזרה לפעילות תקינה ומלאה של האוניברסיטה.

ברכה,
מנהל הסטודנטים

I’m so incredibly embarrassed; a generation of students is getting utterly screwed because adults - supposed mentors - cannot resolve this conflict.

In case you don’t read Hebrew, this essentially means that next semester is canceled indefinitely. We don’t even have the option of going to classes taught by non-senior professors. We just can’t go to school, can’t get an education, can’t move on with our schedules. We can’t even use the libraries to study on our own or complete work from last semester.

Worst of all - I finally have a car and won’t even have the opportunity to drive to school in 40 minutes as opposed to 2 hours on the bus…

The irony of studying mediation during a strike.

I received an email today from the head of the Conflict Management and Negotiation department at Bar Ilan, apologizing for the inconvenience of the strike. He is new to the position as of this year and I found his email refreshing; isn’t this what you would expect considering the focus of this department?

He explains that he understands the frustration of the collateral victims here - the students - and he notices the irony of studying conflict management in a country and time period where the leaders can’t get their act together and come to agreement. He hopes that in the meantime we are learning from the experience and that the strike will be over soon so that we can work towards entering society with the skills needed to avoid such situations in the future. He announces that the department will do as much as possible to make sure we finish our degrees with the least trouble.

Ok, I projected a bit; he didn’t necessarily say all of that, but I got his drift and very much appreciated the sentiment. It is good to know that someone at the university is thinking of us students; even if he is involved in the mediation field and he is striking himself.

An academic lizrael update.

*Yawn*. *Stretch*. It’s a sunny winter Sunday. Today is as good as any to update about the awful university situation in Israel right now.

Basically, I have no idea what is going to happen for the rest of the year because the department heads, university presidents, strikers and government don’t know. Somewhere in this giant, ridiculous, embarrassing strike the idea of education got forgotten.

We, the students, cannot plan our summers, even if some of us (me) have overdue degrees to complete, weddings to attend abroad, family to visit and life to go on.

They are talking about considering next semester (bet) as a semester aleph and the summer as a semester bet to complement it, since there are full-year classes that haven’t started yet (like mine). Then again, my department can’t plan the next steps - including courses and schedules for these semesters - because the professors on strike can’t talk about it or plan. So I can’t start finding a way to somehow finish up before the summer, using only next semester.

Well, there’s the state of academia in the State of Israel… for now.  Unfortunately, this battle isn’t over yet.