Bureaucracy

If you get frustrated with bureaucracy in the US, I have a guaranteed cure that will teach you to appreciate what you have: spend a day dealing with bureaucracy in the Middle East.

I am trying to switch my studies from a Master's degree program taught in English to a degree taught entirely in Arabic.  There is a prerequisite that students have a bachelor's degree in International Relations.  My problem?  I have a master's in the subject.  My bachelor's is in engineering.

"I'm sorry," one University bureaucrat told me when I tried switching last semester.  "You don't meet the qualifications."

I spent several weeks trying to find a solution and ran out of time before the semester started.  Now I'm trying again.  I was excited to discover that I could handle the switch through an entirely different office.  Surely, I thought, most people would have more common sense than the bureaucrat who turned me down before.  Nope.  I was once again informed that my master's degree does not meet the requirement of a bachelor's degree in the subject.

These are the times I just want to give up... but I suppose that if I ever expect to handle multinational, coalition planning and operations, learning to fight these battles is an essential skill.