Recognition for Desmond

So, the time has come, almost a full ten years on from the graduation ceremony, to take my desmond to the Greek authorities and have it registered. My feelings on being awarded one need to be told at some point but it is too much to write easily and I intend today to write about why it is necessary to have the desmond acknowledged by the Greek state.

I will be making an application to the UOA to read for a Master's degree (woo!). For this to happen, I have to have a degree from a university recognized by the Greek state. Fortunately I do have one of those - the aforementioned desmond - but how do I prove it? Well, to prove it I have to go to the nice people at DIKATSA and show them my degree and a ton of other documents and then they take a year to figure out whether the fekking university which gave me the desmond is on their list of approved universities. Then I get a bit of paper saying that, yes indeedy, my degree is from a recognized Uni. They then need me to sit a bunch of exams to give me another bit of paper which shows that my degree is as well-heeled academically as the equivalent degree here. Finally, they will not be able to certify anywhere that my desmond is worth the same as a Greek degree gotten with a grade of 65%, and this because I cannot get a transcript with my grades in every piece of written work I ever did.

It was a sportsman's desmond, anyway.

Anyway - I have the dilemma of choosing whether to have the degree recognized as equivalent to a literature degree or an archaeology degree. It's a little bit of a no-brainer, really. Ah but then they get to tell me that I ain't done any papers on Byz. stuff and that I have to sit a bunch of these - which would be fun in a general educational sort of way.

So to re-cap - they can certify I have a degree with just a bunch of papers I am collecting and €120. They can certify I have a classical archaeology degree if I sit a bunch of exams. They cannot certify how good a degree it is unless my Uni breaks with standard practice and sends them transcripts that they do not make.

I am going to keep all informed about how progress with my attempts to do a Masters degree go.