Being a Long-Distance Student...is difficult.

We have six guests right now. Originally, the plan was that I would be sleeping downstairs with Eka. Then Eka decided that she’s going to Tbilisi, so now I’m sleeping down there alone. Our guests are with a US aid project, and I’m curious to talk to them tonight and see what they’re doing in Oni. Unfortunately, to do so will be possible only because I’m staying home from play practice tonight. Eka is gone and Maguala has to go to practice, so I’m staying home to help Nona serve dinner.

This is probably better in all honesty. The day before summer registration started, I finally had internet and so was the registration notice from my university. I quickly shot off emails to my Student Affairs office and my advisers, trying to remind them that I exist and politely requesting that they clear me to register. Here we are four days later. I don’t have internet, but I did this morning. I took advantage of the opportunity to send an article to one of the university’s journals about international human rights issues. But I couldn’t register. My advisers are both lovely people. They’re also very helpful. My first year, I was assigned to a woman with the same interests as myself, but she decided to go on sabbatical to pursue those interests so I was reassigned at Christmas. My second adviser is a very intelligent and helpful person, but we don’t have the same research interests. To complicate things further, I went abroad and she went on maternity leave at the same time. The one woman I’ve spoken with at length about what I’ve done and what she would advise me to do next is no longer my adviser because university policy changed. Where she used to be the adviser for the 2013 class, she’s now the adviser for Sophomores.

I’m ok being somewhat distant from the advising department, but the university makes it a problem. In order to register or declare a minor, I need adviser approval. To get grants or credit for independent research, I need a faculty member to approve and supervise my project. Not so convenient when New Yorkers (and particularly at a huge university) don’t have time for me unless I’m there in flesh and blood. And the way the bureaucracy is set up, even having a few kind professors and advisers who agree to help me doesn’t help. It