Second class citizen

I spent a lot of energy convincing myself to go to the gym today - I was really not feeling motivated to go, even though my energy level is totally in the toilet and could use some energetic activity to give it a boost. Finally, I convinced myself to go by promising myself I only had to go to the gym, I didn't have to commit to anything extravagant, just get in there and move.

Then I get to the gym and have to stand around for ten minutes while the "supervisor" checked that I did indeed have a membership at the school facility. He asked if I was registered for classes - which I'm not - there's none offered during summer by my department - and I told him 'no' but I'd paid money to have access. Finally I did get in, but by that time, I was so annoyed and deflated by the futility of my anger that I really didn't have a very good workout.

Now, I'm not enough of a hothead that a minor inconvenience like this will ruin my day, but as I stood there awkwardly in the entrance trying to avoid the people with legitimate cards (i.e. undergrads) trying to get past me while my card was checked, I had time to remember all the other times this kind of thing has happened at this university. This is probably the sixth or seventh time I've had problems getting into the gym - in each case, somehow, it's the registrar's fault - they eliminate all the graduate students off the approved list they send updating the gym on who's registered and who's not.

Same thing regularly happens at the library. Apparently, it's bizarre for a graduate student to want to access the library outside of registered classes, like over the summer. Hello! We're graduate students. You know, scholars in the making? Some of us actually take what we do pretty seriously and like to learn new things (i.e. read books) when we're not actually 'forced' to by classes. Yet every summer if I want to access the library while I'm not registered in classes, I have to chase around for a special letter from the dean/department head/supervisor (it seems to change every year) saying I need access. Oh, and it has to be on letterhead - email won't do.

And forget the fact that grad students who want to use the health facilities on campus not only have to buy insurance, but shell out a couple hundred extra dollars just to have access to the health clinic. On top of that, the insurance is some of the most expensive I've ever seen if you need to add spouses or dependents (which some grad students actually do have).

I'm getting tired of being the second class citizen on campus. Bad enough I'm an alien and have to run around doing a whole bunch of SEVIS stuff every term, but I get a double whammy as a grad student because the registrar continually cuts off my access to services that I've come to expect from a university.

Maybe I was spoiled at the last university I was at - as a grad student there, I was treated the same as the undergrads, if not better in some cases.

I can only assume this 'difficulty' with grad students at the registrar stems from the fact that I don't shell out $40K/yr like the undergrads to attend. That's true. I don't pay that in tuition (though I shell out about that much just to live in this place). BUT. They also get work out of me. Work that they would otherwise have to pay someone else to do. And frankly, the tuition waiver and the stipend that they give me is about equal to what they would pay someone else to teach the courses I teach. In other words, they break even.

What they're supposed to get out of supporting grad students is good PR. We're supposed to go out there and represent them at conferences (and later in the job market), showing how brilliant the students who come out of this university are. We're supposed to get great jobs and drive up their retention records. Oh, and maybe even down the road when we've made it big, we'll send a cheque to the Alumni Assoc. (Ha!) We're supposed to make the university look good. And we do. Which should count for something.

At the very least, I think I should be able to access things that I've paid for or that will help me succeed as a student. Is that asking too much?