Application For Replacement Diploma - Registrar'S Office - University: Fill & Download for Free

Deconstructing an ObituaryThe e-mail was unsolicited and unwelcome. Not spam but a message from a university to its alumni. It wasn’t my alma-mater, rather one of several from which I hold postgraduate diplomas. It announced the death of an emeritus professor, whose name once filled me with despair.I could have thought ‘good riddance’, but then, it was a shame really, that he was no longer around to appreciate the irony: On the one occasion we met, he blocked the funding for my PhD, fulminating that I had neither the background nor the attributes to deserve even the chance to earn a postgraduate diploma.So I read the obituary with morbid fascination, but I could not hear the words in my mind as I read. They were drowned out by flashbacks, to the 20 minutes that knocked my life sideways and left me with an enduring hatred of those who pursue the status of Academia only to abuse its authority.It was the most crucial interview of my career, for a respected research fellowship, originally created by its founder so doctors in training could find funding independent of capricious pharmaceutical sponsorship. Alas, in every decent Camelot the founding King Arthur figure is replaced, sooner or later, by a Mordred…2014: “With deep regret, we report the death of Professor…”1988: “Good morning Doctor, or should I say Mister…?”Uh-oh – sarcasm alert. The interview has gone round 14 interviewers so far, all very benignly. The learned professor is the 15th. And hostile.2014: “Was born in…. Graduated from…1988: “I’ve been reading your CV. You’ve done some bloody awful jobs. You really need this fellowship, don’t you?”Ah, the “have you stopped beating your wife” question. Say Yes and it condemns my CV; say No and it’s game over. I try to steer a middle way:“I didn’t create the situation Sir; the freeze on consultant posts did. We all need an advantage now.”“And that’s’ precisely why you don’t deserve it. In this city we don’t back losers.”2014: …A keen sportsman … represented his university… a talented musician, always giving his utmost in competitions...1988: “In a good CV we look for indicators of strength, competitiveness, team-loyalty and eye-hand dexterity. We expect to see sporting achievement, military experience or musical ability, or at least the confidence that comes from a high achieving family. There’s no mention of any of that here.”“My family were indeed military, and we all have individual talents, sporting, musical or linguistic. Mine was as the scientist of the family. That’s surely more relevant to operating a flow cytometer than sport. It needs a computer, and with those I’m very good indeed.”“To be a winner you need the awareness of the hunter and the killer instinct of the wolf. An introvert who spends his time tapping away on a computer won’t have either of those qualities.”‘Killer instinct’? I didn’t go into medicine to kill. Bloody Hell.2014: “Served with the RAMC in…” [corner of the British Empire where the natives could be treated with contempt]1988: “The generation you see before you on this committee have worked resolutely, to the highest standards of perfectionism to have this city internationally acknowledged as the highest authority in every field of medicine, so we rightly attract the highest calibre applicants for our training posts. The danger is that we also attract buffoons hoping to cover their inadequacy by clothing themselves in our reputation. We cannot and will not tolerate such… parasites.2014: As Research Fellow he enhanced his diagnostic skills and developed scientific research interests… studying biological mechanisms at cell and molecular level.”1988: “So, now, coming to your proposal, I must say I’m totally sceptical. I know nothing about flow-cytometry or the tertiary structure of DNA, but I don’t need to. All I need ask myself is ‘can this project prove its hypothesis?’ and I don’t believe it can. We don’t back losers here”.“Yes Sir, it can, Flow-cytometric nucleoid analysis has already been used to grade breast cancers; it’s almost certainly true for bladder cancer too, but it would be just as scientifically valid if we DIS-prove the hypothesis regarding bladder cancer.”2014: “Appointed consultant physician in… Building up his unit he insisted on the highest standards of clinical acumen and scientific logic from his staff…. Carried out programmes of scientific and clinical research…”1988: “Rubbish. No one here would ever lose face by proving their own idea wrong. In this city, Boy, we don’t do research to find things out, we’re the ultimate authority, we already know. Here we do research to prove to the world that we’re right, always have been, always will be. Tell me, why did you choose Urology in the first place?”“It’s a relatively new specialty not burdened by a heritage of traditional procedures never tested in trials. All urology’s techniques are new and research-based.”“I don’t accept that it’s research-based. It’s primitive.”“Then surely Sir, if it’s in its infancy, research is obviously needed. You will note in my CV my own paper on a trial of optical urethrotomy.”“That’s wasn’t research, that was just fiddling.2014: “For his impressive record in clinical medicine and research he was appointed Professor… head of department… postgraduate dean.”1988: “In my opinion anyone wanting to be a urologist has already admitted to himself that he’s not good enough to be a general surgeon. In this city we don’t back losers.”Ah, the triple repetition beloved of the political speechmaker.I look for support from the project’s supervisor, a consultant urologist, sat to the side of me; - it’s supposed to be joint presentation after all. His entire specialty is being insulted to his face yet he remains silent, stone-faced, withdrawn.I think, Oh God, this interview is a set up. He’s been ordered by someone high up not to challenge a pre-determined verdict, probably on pain of funding cuts if he breaks rank. It’s Orwellian. In ‘1984’ they don’t kill you straight away, they cure you first and then you get the bullet. That’s why the other interviewers were so benign, because the executioner was being left until last. I must answer back, because my supporter won’t.“Well Sir, to make the point of this project, at present all in-situ bladder cancers are treated by radiotherapy, but in half of patients it recurs and they need total cystectomy. We just don’t know which half, and by the time we find out it’s often too late. This project will enable us to identify that half with radio-resistant tumours who need surgery alone. I’d call that research and worthwhile research at that.“Huh. It will be a sad day when we let urologists of all people prove a barbaric operation superior to a medical treatment.”He doesn’t want Urology to improve through research. He wants to reserve the academic kudos for his own specialty, and keep Urology where he can continue to despise it.2014: “He never left anybody in doubt about his opinions, and served on a very large number of committees… reflecting the value held for his plain speaking.”1988: He’s not even addressing me anymore, but the rest of the committee“Every one of us on this committee has held this fellowship and built our careers and reputations on it. It is a club for winners and we have a responsibility to guard its prestige. Everyone knows we were chosen because we’re winners, and are winners because we were chosen. If we start letting losers into our midst people won’t know that anymore and we will all be diminished….”2014: “Loyalty to his junior staff made posts in his unit highly sought after…”Yes, because the only safe place to be was in his tent pissing out.1988: “…Opportunities for achievement should go to those whose background and personality are worthy of the respect that goes with it. I find it offensive, therefore, that this application was ever made in first place, but what concerns me most is that the candidate clearly has no insight into HOW he’s given offence. It’s not simply that he isn’t good enough to join this fellowship, it’s the disrespect for all of us implicit in imagining he ever could be.”And thus he alienates me from the whole committee, but this research really needs doing. Patients are dying from getting the wrong treatment, but he doesn’t care. That’s not what matters to a professor who was once a scientist, but is now a politician. His priority is to ensure that prestigious research is carried out, not for the sake of science, but as a conveyor-belt for promoting the “right” people. Like the lifeboats on the Titanic, chances to prove oneself go only the right people.“I shall veto this application and any other by this candidate.”The committee votes to appoint me, by 14 votes to 1, but the terms of the bequest that funds the fellowship require a unanimous vote. One against trumps all those in favour.2014: “He retired to enjoy a life of golf, cameras and motoring with his wife and family…”…”Epilogue.The award went to a medical registrar researching an obscure thyroid hormone receptor. In all the years since it has not even slightly influenced the treatment of hypothyroidism, but the candidate got his senior lecturer’s post out of it, and became CEO of the local hospital, in which he distinguished himself by mediocrity.My supervisor took the begging bowl round the cancer charities seeking alternative funding. He found it eventually but I told him where to stuff it. Five years of hospital politics had left a bad taste, and that interview ominously foretold future battles over senior registrar posts even with a PhD. Shortly after that even the new professor of surgery was ousted by a palace revolution among the academic elite and I saw the writing on the wall: If a professor with an international reputation couldn’t withstand the withering blast of teaching hospital politics, what chance did a mere registrar stand, without the upper crust background or sporty extrovert male bonding to attract powerful sponsors?In contrast to the happy family life enjoyed by the good professor, my first marriage was destroyed by that interview. Already doomed, by brutal on-call hours, broken faith in my capacity as a breadwinner gave it the coup de grace.A GP friend had a trainee post vacant, and offered it to me. I took it like a shot, hoping to retrieve the marriage, or, failing that, to survive the split better for leaving the politics behind. The move to GP land proved too late to avoid divorce, but did make starting over possible, and if I was persona-non-grata in the teaching hospital then it was a different story in the sticks. I had the goodwill there to find a small but lucrative practice amid a population of friendly patients, and marry the most beautiful nurse in the local DGH.The bladder cancer project was completed eventually, but not by me. The consultant phoned me later, amazed that I’d given all my literature searches to my replacement. Why on Earth would I help a competitor? Immersed in the world of cynical academic rivalry, he just didn’t get it: We were supposed to be on the same side. All of us.

I think I first became aware that I was somewhat smarter than my peers in my early teens. I then became interested in intelligence, IQ testing, logic puzzles, Edward DeBono's books on lateral thinking and other stuff. I bought some of those 'Know Your Own IQ'-type books by the likes of Hans Eysenck and tested myself (as fairly as I could) and was not entirely surprised, though still quietly pleased, when I scored above the threshold for Mensa (98th percentile). So I guess I was already unusually intelligent as a teenager. From my reading on the subject, I also knew that my IQ would probably peak in my late teens or early twenties, so I was probably going to get even smarter.In my mid-teens, my interests switched from art and music to mathematics and physics, which probably happened as a result of my new passions for science-fiction and electronics, which developed at around the same time, and I consumed books on these subjects voraciously. I had been put in one of the lower streams in mathematics at school because I never showed much aptitude for it in my earlier school career. This was because I simply wasn't interested in it and found it boring, and I couldn't be bothered to apply myself to things I found boring. But once I had become interested in mathematics, I quickly moved beyond the mathematics I was being taught at school in both breadth and depth. I remember that I was friends for a while with a Chinese boy, Chong-Si Tong, who was in the top maths stream, and that he was astonished when I casually told him that I was studying partial differential calculus (in my leisure time). He told me that even his older brother, who was in his final year at school and also in the top maths stream, had not even touched the stuff that I was doing.Chong-Si was not the only one of my school peers who had become aware of my intellectual precociousness, though I didn't do much to hide it, and could even be a bit of a show-off; while my school peers decorated their school bags, briefcases and satchels with stickers of their favourite football team, or hand-drawn logos of their favourite rock bands, I personalized my tan leatherette briefcase with equations from the mathematics and physics I was learning, and would delight in explaining what they meant to anyone who asked.My teachers also became aware of my new-found passion for mathematics and physics, and some of them encouraged my interests in various ways. I was given access to the school 'computer' (really just an Olivetti teletype terminal linked by an acoustic coupler to the ICL mainframe at Sheffield Polytechnic - this was the 1970s, long before computers became ubiquitous in schools and homes). This was a privilege that only the students in the sixth form (the most senior two years in high school) normally enjoyed.True to the nerd stereotype, in my later years at school I had been excused from Physical Education because of persistent tendinitis in my Achilles tendons - a condition I am convinced was brought on by the punishing cross-country runs around the extensive and hilly school grounds that the P.E. teachers sadistically inflicted upon all the male students at least once a week (this is the reason why, to this day, I loathe any physical exercise or sport that involves too much running - it brings back too many vivid memories of the mud, sweat, shin splints, stitch, nausea and heaving breathlessness of those grueling runs). Because I was 'off sports', I would usually spend P.E. lessons in the school library, reading books on mathematics and physics, or in the library 'computer' room, writing BASIC programs to generate numerical results for the equations I had been studying in relativity theory.All of this, and the fact that I was also a member of the school Chess Club, the Natural History Club (I was made responsible for the care of the biology lab's xenopus toads) and the Debating Society, established my reputation as an uber-nerd, the School Brain, and my peers gave me the nickname 'Professor' and treated me with a mixture of bewilderment and deferential respect.After I left school, one of my oldest school friends, Andrew Silman, confided that I had been widely regarded by my friends and classmates as the smartest student in the entire school. I recall that my reaction to that news was an ironic laugh, the reason being that I had dropped out of school at the age of 16, with only a handful of academic grades to my name, so even if my teachers knew how bright I was (and some of them undoubtedly did), they probably thought I hadn't done much to demonstrate my abilities in terms of paper qualifications (and where our education system is concerned, paper qualifications are all that really count, right?). So I felt that being judged the smartest kid in the school by my peers was a kind of vindication, and a 'fuck you!' to all the teachers who had written me off as a 'gifted under-achiever' - or just a failure.The reason I had dropped out of school was that my father died at the age of 58 when I was 15. [1] This event pushed me into a kind of psychological shut-down, and I withdrew from the world into a protective shell. I decided that school was no longer a major priority in my life - staying sane was. [2] So I started played truant (US: 'hookie') constantly, and only turned up at school for a few days out of my final school year - much to the exasperation of my teachers and the school's truant officer. I just stayed at home all day, and lost contact with pretty much all of my school friends, except for Andrew Silman, who lived close by and used to call round quite regularly (partly, I suspect, to check that I was okay). [3]But the time I spent at home was not wasted. On the contrary, I applied myself to study as I had never done at school. I devoured books on mathematics and physics, and immersed myself in a world of abstract ideas to the exclusion of almost everything else. I would sit in an armchair in the living room, or at the kitchen table, and just read, take notes and do calculations for hours on end without a break. I also became a chronic insomniac, as I would frequently stay awake studying all night long, fueled by endless cups of coffee, with only the radio (either Radio Luxembourg or American Forces Radio (Europe) - I liked their music playlists) and the family dog for company. I would study until the 'dawn chorus' of twittering birds and the first rays of the morning sun told me it was probably time for me to get some sleep.I eventually got a temporary 'work experience' job working as a trainee lab technician at Sheffield University, in the department of physics and astronomy, which was my first introduction to the world of work and of academia (thinking about it, perhaps I was the original Will Hunting, haha!). I became friends with many of the physics students I met there, and I secretly envied them because they were at university, studying physics, and by that time I knew that that was what I wanted to do more than anything else in the world. But I also feared that this was an impossible dream, given that I had dropped out of school at 16 with only a handful of qualifications. Then I turned 18 and came into the money from my father's estate and pension and the sale of the family home (I had moved into my own two-room apartment by then). I decided to take time out from work and concentrate on my studies again, in the hope of at least gaining entrance to a local further education college to study something practical, such as computer programming or electronics - both things I had previous experience of, and interest in, of course.Then, in the summer of 1980, fate finally smiled on me. I came across an advertisement (no larger than a postage stamp, so it was very lucky that I spotted it) in the Guardian newspaper for a course at Middlesex Polytechnic, a college in London. It was a new kind of course, called a Diploma of Higher Education (Dip.H.E.), developed by an American educationalist, Joel Gladstone. It was a modular course offering a wide variety of subject choices, including mathematics and physics! And, crucially, no formal school qualifications were required for entry! All applicants had to do was turn up for a day of interviews and tests. So I did. And - joy of joys - I was accepted!In the late summer of 1980 I moved from Sheffield to the idyllic environs of Middlesex Polytechnic's Trent Park campus - a large country park on the outskirts of North London, centred around a Georgian mansion house (the ancestral home of the Sassoon family), with a lake and acres of wooded grounds. (It was such a green and peaceful setting that it was hard to believe it was only 30 minutes by tube from central London. middlesex uni trent park campus) I spent two of the happiest years of my young life there, made many good friends, and studied not only mathematics and physics but also microelectronics, organic chemistry, microbiology, astronomy, electronic music, computer graphics, sociology, philosophy and psychology. And I loved every minute of it! (Incidentally, it was during my first summer vacation at Middlesex that I—finally—sat the IQ test for entrance to Mensa, and was accepted. It was also in that summer that I got to grips with the mathematics of wave theory and Fourier Analysis.)In my final year, I knew that if I was ever going to gain entry to a university to study theoretical physics (I had realized by this time that I was far more interested in theoretical physics than experimental physics, because it was more mathematically challenging and 'out there'), hopefully using my Dip.H.E. as a substitute for school grades, then it was now or never. So I applied to pretty much every university in the country that offered a theoretical physics course (this was not actually a very long list, as most UK universities back then did not offer theoretical physics, and they probably still don't, as it is seen as a rather esoteric subject that only appeals to a small minority of students).Now, theoretical physics is a tough course (apparently the toughest course there is, according to a recent academic survey) and so universities generally consider only the best and brightest applicants for it - straight-A students with top school grades in mathematics and physics. I didn't have these, of course; I was only doing a two-year higher education course at - horror of horrors - a polytechnic! [4] Worse still, I had already used up two years of my four-year higher education grant (fortunately, this was the 1980s, before non-repayable student grants were replaced by student loans), and as a standard degree course took three years back then, this would mean that I would have to go straight into the second year, or I would have no grant left to cover my final year.All of these things meant that I was fully expecting most of the university registrars who received my application to just glance at it briefly and feed it straight into the shredder (perhaps with a contemptuous snort) without even showing me the courtesy of responding with a rejection letter. And, apparently, all of them did - except one. Just as I was giving up hope, I got a letter inviting me to an interview at the University of East Anglia (U.E.A.) [5], a modern 'provincial' university in the picturesque, medieval market town of Norwich, in the county of Norfolk (a large coastal county of endless farmland and big skies, and very hot and dry in summer - probably the closest the UK comes to Texas). I attended the interview, which went well, and they said they would be in touch.I completed my Dip.H.E. course, bade farewell to London (though I was to return and settle there a few years later) and spent a relaxing, enjoyable and memorable summer at my sister's home in Sheffield, while continuing to study mathematics and physics in the hope that my application to U.E.A. would be successful (this is when I read the Feynman Lectures on Physics, among other books). Imagine my exhilaration when, later in the summer, I received a letter from U.E.A. informing me that I had been accepted into the second year (phew!) of their theoretical physics course! And the rest, as they say, is history (or perhaps for another time...).So, to return to the original question, yes, I guess I was abnormally bright as a teenager. The fact that I was able to get onto the second year of a theoretical physics degree course after dropping out of school at 16 (well, technically, 15...) with only a few qualifications is probably a good indication of that (I certainly don't know anyone else who's done that, though I'm not saying they don't exist). I was also very lucky, of course, on at least two occasions; firstly, finding the advertisement for the Dip.H.E. course and then getting the interview at U.E.A.. But I had also put in a lot of dedicated study over the five or more years leading up to that point, so I feel that I had earned my luck. I'm not sure brains alone would have got me into university, but brains combined with passion, determination and hard work did. I think there is a lesson there for everyone; being smart is all very well, but there is still no substitute for good, honest graft.[1] This was not entirely unexpected, as my father had suffered declining health for some years due to a heart condition, but it was obviously still upsetting, even if I didn't show it outwardly. I think my brother was surprised by my apparently stoical reaction to the news (my father died in hospital, having been taken ill on a fishing trip, while I was at home). But I had already been hardened to grief by the death of my mother when I was 9 - an event that had hit me much harder at that younger age, and which probably also hastened my father's physical decline. I had also been psychologically preparing myself for the inevitability of my father's death for a long time and, in a sense, I had already rehearsed both his death and the grieving process many times before in my head, so when he finally died I just felt a kind of numb resignation. With my father's death, this also meant that I was technically an orphan, though my brother was just old enough to qualify as my and my sister's legal guardian, which he became. The three of us lived on in the family home for another year or more, in circumstances reminiscent of - though less dramatic than - the 90s American TV series 'Party of Five', before we each moved out to separate addresses and on to jobs or college.[2] Not that school had ever been a major priority for me. I regarded school as something to be endured rather than enjoyed, as I found most school lessons unchallenging, boring and irrelevant to my interests*. After my father died, maintaining my academic grades seemed even more irrelevant and unimportant - I felt that I had no one left to disappoint (other than myself).*(The only subjects I really enjoyed were the creative ones - Art and English (composition) - though I kind of enjoyed Chemistry too, simply because I liked messing around with chemicals. Perhaps surprisingly, I didn't enjoy physics lessons that much, for various reasons. Firstly, most of the material just didn't interest me, because it was just too mundane compared to my real interests in more advanced topics like relativity and astrophysics. Secondly, most of it was material that I had already taught myself in my own time - e.g. electrical circuit theory. Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, my physics teacher, Mr Bramall, had made it plain on numerous occasions that he just didn't like me, and so I felt quite uncomfortable being in the same room with him. Maybe he felt threatened or insulted by this cocky know-it-all who found his lessons boring, or maybe he was just exasperated and despairing at my truancy and general lack of effort because he saw it as me wasting the intellectual gifts he probably knew I had. (He once ejected me from a lesson on the practical uses of the cathode ray oscilloscope on the grounds that I had missed the previous lesson on the theory of the same (I'd been playing truant again). So I thought 'I'll show him!' and that evening I wrote a 25-page report on the theory and applications of the cathode ray oscilloscope, complete with neat diagrams and relevant formulae. I was able to do this because, unbeknownst to Mr Bramall, I actually had a cathode ray oscilloscope (a Daystrom Heathkit 1012U) in my home electronics lab which I had bought off a friend of Andrew Silman who ran a TV repair shop. I handed the report in the next day knowing that he would have to give me full marks, even though doing so would probably make him snap his marking pen with rage (which was partly the intention, of course - I wanted payback for the humiliating way he had treated me in class the previous day). It was duly marked "A+++++, What a clever boy you are!" (Now, call me paranoid, but I suspect he was being just a tad snarky....) I sometimes feel a little guilty for having been such a pain in the arse; he was only trying to do his job, after all, and my uncooperativeness must have been very frustrating. But he also had poor anger-management skills and a short fuse and sometimes vented that frustration in ways that would probably have led to a professional reprimand in the more child-centric and supportive environment of a modern-day school... )[3] It was also Andrew - an electronics hobbyist like me and a fan of all things radio - who, in the year following my father's death, introduced me to the BBC Radio 4 drama series 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy', the highly original and hilarious sci-fi comedy creation of the late, great Douglas Adams, which did a lot to lift my spirits and bring me out of my shell again. I will always be grateful to him - and to Douglas Adams - for that gift. (I met Douglas Adams in person at a book signing in London a couple of years later, and used to have autographed copies of his Hitchhiker books - until they were all stolen at a student house party a few years later :o( (they are probably worth quite a bit of money now...))[4] There was a lot of snobbery (much of it undeserved) from universities regarding the supposedly inferior status of polytechnics back then - although the artificial distinction between them was finally removed when all polytechnics (including Middlesex) were later turned into universities.[5] Though U.E.A. is not in the Russell Group of British universities (the UK equivalent of American Ivy League universities), it is ranked in the top 1% of all universities in the world, is a world-renowned research university, particularly in biology and climate science, and recently ranked number 14 out of all the universities in the country, which is not too shabby (especially considering that some British universities that scored above U.E.A. also ranked in the top ten in the entire world). It was also recently rated the best university in the country in terms of various measures of 'student satisfaction' - quality of life, accommodation, amenities, academic teaching, etc. (But, hey, I could have told them that...). Its main campus, Earlham Park, has also won awards for its bold and imaginative modern architecture. University of East Anglia. Incidentally, the motto of U.E.A is 'Do Different'*, which I think is particularly fitting in my own case. I certainly 'did different' in my teenage years, and have been somewhat unconventional my entire adult life, too :o)*This is punchy and unambiguous, but arguably ungrammatical (because ‘different’ is an adjective, not an adverb), which is probably why it was later changed to ‘Do Differently’.

In the United States, yes. However, you will have to show some material loss if you think your going to get a financial judgement. The most you are likely to receive is an court order directing the university to correct your record.I worked in the Office of the Registrar at a medium-sized university for several years. If there was an error on the part of the university, this would probably be easy to resolve. If we made a mistake on your diploma, we’d get you a new one, free of charge. If we posted the wrong degree to your student record due to a data entry error, we would make a correction and replace any transcripts you might have ordered that contained the error, again free of charge. If your advisor made an error on your graduation application, we would do a degree audit, and replace your diploma and transcripts, free of charge.If you made an error, such as failing to ensure that you were enrolled in the correct degree program, they will probably make you squirm a little before acquiescing to your demand. Why make you squirm? It’s because if you are like the majority of students you will blame the university for the mistake that you made. You might call the president’s office, your state senator, or the local newsmedia and drag the university and the staff through the mud for the mistake that you made. However, if you are in the minority and own your mistake, people will more than likely trip over themselves to help you. I would have.Best of luck.