Their admin is all over the place, they don't know what forms they have with whom, they are so mixed up themselves that they say something different everytime there is a phone conversation. Each lecturer and admin person, the finance area, contradicts the other - both on the phone and in emails.

I have communicated many times and at length to the main admin person that I have a life-threatening mental illness and that it may affect my needs throughout etc. The Disability liaison guy told me this week that after months of communicating that to her, she calls him and asks "What are Wendy's physical disability needs for the upcoming on-campus stint?". Obviously she doesn't either read email or listen to phone calls (either live or Voicemail messages), as I don't have a physical disability and I'm not even doing the On Campus portion - they cancelled the first On-campus stint one day before it was to start and it was to have been in a remote part of the state so the complexities of that would have been difficult for every student to attend, but for me it was diabolical as I had had to do so much preparation. However, I understand that things do get cancelled - but she only EMAILED students the cancellation the day before the On campus stint (staying on campus for several days). She didn't even call people to say it was cancelled. Had I not seen my email I would have gone there, a three hour drive etc. So I formally changed my delivery mode to fully off-campus, which they offer, but she doesn't obviously keep track of her own correspondence.

It goes on and on and on like this but I won't bore you and it's stressful for me. So I'll just keep trying to negotiate around all of this and get through the course, but if I get to the state of being irredeemably overloaded and suicidal, of course I'll have to bail. Oh, and the academic part of the course is fine - that's going really well - it's the personnel and administration that is so difficult. There are just blockages at every stage - it must be as tiring for them as it is for me - a shocking way of doing business. I've done loads of study in large institutions before and always found the admin aspects to be difficult, but thes is a whole other ball game.