The Gatekeeper

She's also referred to as The Dragonlady and The Troll of YRL.  She is the Dissertation Archivist and she has been known to make grown men cry...

Basically, she's the one who checks the formatting and cotton-content of the bond used (must be at least 25% for preservation purposes, apparently) when you finish your dissertation and turn it in to the library to be kept for posterity.  Since the filing deadline is very strict and she will never budge on margin size, she is often a source of great frustration for graduate students.  Grad students drag themselves in on the day of the deadline, having just given birth to five-years worth of work and then are told that some issue with their pagination means they won't be able to file right then after all.  As if after years of academic posturing we have any ability to follow directions on formatting minutia.  And in The Gatekeeper's defense it must be perenially frustrating to witness this inability to follow simple rules.  So June 2 will be the mighty battle of fatigued, stressed-out, socially inept graduate students and a single, shrill-voiced representative of rigid bureaucracy.  

In an effort to avoid this grand human drama I'm going to try and file the week prior.  And today, I'm going to stop by and visit said Dragonlady with a few samples of my document so that she can check my formatting.  Now, I've had a few interactions with her already though I'd say they were just preliminary encounters.  In the first I called her to ask about copyright permission on figures from texts published by companies that no longer exist.  She replied to contact the publisher and ask them.  Before I could repeat myself that the companies are gone she had already hung up on me.  Helpful.  And THEN, last week, I approached her at the front YRL information desk to ask her when a good time to come by the archive office was (its only open from 12 to 4 so I wanted to come during a lag period in order to be efficient with my time).  She said she won't answer any archivist questions except between 12 and 4 at the office.  I tried to explain that I was just asking when the office was least busy but she cut me off and shooed me away saying to come by between 12 and 4.  Argh, so infuriating!  I stormed outside and almost kicked a pigeon.  So anyway, today is the day.  Official game time, Round One.  I'm going to try and be as polite and ingratiating as possible (I've been instructed to flatter her ego and, if need be, grovel).  I am sympathetic to the fact that she is for the most part simply trying to do her job well.  But, well, she doesn't have to be mean.  

I'll report back.