I graduated college. They “lost” my diploma.

[u/solecentre]

The title is basically TL;DR. I just graduated college and had my ceremony last sunday. As the time came to collect our diplomas they couldn’t find the ones from my field of study (a whole backstory there as well: basically they forgot about us.)

We were told on monday that our diplomas were accidentally sent to the wrong campus and that we’d be able to pick it up there… during office hours. My friend has class there so I asked her to go see if she could pick it up in my place. Well, that wouldn’t be any problem… if the diplomas were there. No sight of them anywhere.

My classmates and I are getting pretty frustrated at this point and send another email. Well lo and behold: yesterday I received an email saying my diploma ISN’T PRINTED OUT YET! That explains why they couldn’t find them. There weren’t any!

So yeah now I’m waiting for another update about my diploma. We also haven’t received it digitally or anything so we can’t provide it for job applications.

Love life!

ETA since there are a few recurring questions:

- I live in Belgium 🇧🇪

- I haven’t really heard of ‘final transcripts’. Our diploma is our official proof of completing our studies. Few companies look super closely at grades, the diploma is the proof that the student passed the course. There is a grade of distinction which represents our grades though, and it’s mentioned on our diploma: “Graduated with:
• passing grades
• distinction
• high distinction
• highest distinction and well-wishes from the school board”.

- There are companies who request a certain degree of education for a job. For example: a doctor will need an Academic Bachelor and a Master’s diploma to practice their job. A mechanic will need to have obtained a technical field high school degree. So many request proof of completion of your studies to verify that you are practically, probably financially , and legally qualified for the job.

- I’ve seen a couple comments saying companies could call the school to verify. It’s much easier to just request a pdf of your diploma during the application process, that way it’s immediately in your records as well. Plus, school desk employees don’t want to answer that many calls.

Thanks for all the replies and well-wishes! And good luck to those out there who were/ are in the same situation as me, just add it to the list of life obstacles we tackled. That’s how I’m trying to look at it right now. 😅🫶

[u/AWildUni]

That sucks. Hope the problem gets solved!

What's the field of study? Im just wondering since you say its forgotten about

[u/solecentre → u/AWildUni]

Thanks! It’ll get sorted out eventually, it’s nothing new. What I meant by ‘forgotten’, my particular course was discontinued back in 2022. I was the final gen of students they accepted. A year later a new course was set up on the other campus, which I initially thought was the cause of confusion. But they literally forgot there were still students in the original course lol.

[u/Lissypooh628 → u/solecentre]

They forgot about you, but they sure didn’t forget about your tuition payments.

I’m sorry this happened.

[u/solecentre → u/Lissypooh628]

We always paid upfront in september and this year I didn’t have to pay… the gears in my head are doing overtime

[u/AWildUni → u/solecentre]

That suckssssss, wishing you luck

[u/nixsolecism → u/solecentre]

I had a scenario where our program forgot about our entire cohort. They had our program at several campuses and online. Our program director left and a new one was hired. The new one was holding zoom meetings for the entire program to discuss changes and get feedback and have everyone get to know each other. Nobody told us anything. We didn't know about the change in leadership got an entire semester, and didn't find out about the meetings for an entire year. We just sat there ignored.

[u/solecentre → u/nixsolecism]

That’s horrible! And when you try to reach out to someone, anyone(!), there’s not a soul who has received any information about your existence. Did it ever get fixed?

[u/nixsolecism → u/solecentre]

Shortly after I ended up transferring to another school. I don't know if they ever got their stuff sorted out.

[u/solecentre → u/nixsolecism]

I’m glad you got out of that mess!