Academic Rewards

"No problem," the two greatest words you can hear from the lips of a customer service person.

Today, I went to UBC Parking to get a parking pass. As a graduate student, I knew I had priviledges, but seriously, it was better than I'd expected. If you surf through the website, you'll see they expect you to bring in your car insurance papers -- something that I'd overlooked as, "Hard to forget since it's so common sense." Anyway, I didn't even think to bring them today.

But instead of being disuaded, I played the "Dumb Student."

Me: "Hi! How are you? -- I'm a graduate student, and I just wanted to see what I'd need to get a parking pass."
Lady: "Oh, okay, well, do you have your car insurance papers?"
M: "Ooh! I didn't know I needed those."
L: "Do you know your license plate number?"
M: "Yeah."
L: "No problem."
M: "YEEEEHAWWW!!!!!" (thinking)

And she signed me up on the spot. It was brilliant, and the single greatest reward of my academic career, bar none.

At SFU, there just plain wasn't enough parking, so you had to enter a lottery and be awake at 6:00am or something crazy. At University of Calgary you needed to sign up for waiting lists for various parking lots (my friend put in his name during first year, and now, eight years and two degrees later, his name has finally popped up).