Grad School- Reactivating my Student Account

Remember when I mentioned all the trouble I had trying to pay tuition because my student account had been de-activated? Well, student accounts are used for more than paying tuition- they are also used for accessing library services (such as electronic journals), submitting your dissertation for format review to the graduate school and for submitting the final copy of your dissertation. In other words, I NEEDED my student account in order to COMPLETE the last requirements for graduation- submitting my dissertation for format review and submitting my final dissertation. So I was not expecting the hoops I had to jump through in order to get my account reactivated. First, I was told that my advisor had to request the account be reactivated. I contacted Prof Sunshine who took a week to go to the graduate office and ask what paperwork he needed to fill out. Then, I received a phone call from my graduate admin assistant telling me that my account information was ready to be picked up at the library. That touched off a flurry of phone calls to the IT department about the fact that unless they were going to pay for me to drive 500 miles to pick up the information, then they were going to have to mail the information to me. “But it includes a form that requires your signature.” Fine. I then offered to sign the form in front of a notary and have it notarized. This was completely unacceptable??!!?? I had to call the graduate office and speak with the dean’s admin assistant before I could get approval for the IT department to email me a form, which I then signed and FAXED back to them. I couldn’t scan and email it like a normal person because “how were they to know it was my actual signature”. What I’d like to know is how they knew my “actual signature” was faxed? I received an email saying that the received my fax. Wonderful! I then spent the next 3 days looking in the mail for the password the IT department was supposed to mail. Nothing. I called the IT department and was told it was in the mail. Another week went by, no password. At this point, I have 2 weeks before my committee is expecting my revisions. Other than some changes to graphs and the way figures were labeled, I hadn’t been able to complete any revisions because I had no access to journals. I called the IT department again and asked to speak to the manager (no point in blowing up at a fellow student!). Manager informs me that my password is still sitting on her desk because she didn’t know where to send it. The form I filled out included the section: Address to which information should be mailed- which I had filled out. So I gave the manager my address and asked when I should suspect to receive my password. I was then told 3-10 business days! Want to know why? The IT department drops the password into an envelope, addresses it and then drops it into inter-office mail. It then travels through interoffice mail to the university post office before getting posted. So I did what any good woman would do- I burst into tears about how my deadline was 10 days away and I couldn’t even get started on revisions until I received the password. Manager took pity on me and sent her student worker to drop it in the post box on his way to class. Password arrived in 3 days, giving me a week to complete my revisions.