Dear Editor,

The summer after graduation for an upper sixth former is usually that — summer. You know exactly where you’re going to college and the days are full of endless possibilities: work, parties and the chance to explore the maxim, “Do as thou wilt”. Unless of course, you’re a potential candidate for the UWI law or medicine programme, then it’s all about a niggling voice in the back of your head that won’t let you relax until the university has decided your fate.

The barrage of acceptance letters has died down since early June, but just recently conditional acceptances for law were e-mailed. This is the make-it or break-it e-mail for many wannabe lawyers, and one can certainly understand that an applicant would be anxious, especially if a fellow classmate called to spread the news of his/her success and every other person from their law class has an FB status to the tune of a law acceptance.

Can you imagine yourself in the position of waiting for a letter of acceptance from the faculty of law, a subject you excelled in at the CAPE level while watching persons with lower grades and high school science majors get preference? It seems everyone I encounter is sympathetic to the stresses that come with applying to these faculties whether they are a parent/relative/friend of the applicant or just someone who knows someone who knows someone who’s waiting for acceptance. Everyone, it would seem, except the staff at the admissions office.

The employees of the admissions office seem to belittle prospective students and question their academic prowess when they call to inquire about their future in the UWI law programme. One student who refused to take the harassment inquired if she could be put on to someone else in the office.

“Put on what? The air?” was the reply of a staffer. A lesson in professionalism is something the human resources department might want to inculcate in whatever training process, if any, is given to employees who might eventually have to deal with hysterical applicants or parents. Not everyone is as collective in person as they are on the phone. So for their own safety, tact and a little professional courtesy ought to be applied to all communication because these selective majors are the aspirations of passionate people, some of whom chase their dream with unbridled fanaticism, and the facetiousness of a staffer could be the thing that pushes these people from a fanatical interest in a subject area to maniacal homicide.

Tatiana Answer

tatianswer92@gmail.com