Of all the bullshit myths about graduate school, this one takes the cake – the graduate coordinator is your best friend, your departmental advocate, your unflagging guide through the labyrinthine bureaucracy.  What a shitty illusion to foster in the minds of grad students.  Especially foreign nationals overwhelmed by the dual burdens of university policy and post-9/11 immigration crap.  They desperately want to believe a beneficent paperwork-slaying ninja has got their backs.

In reality, graduate coordinators are a different manifestation of the same problem.  Think public defenders – drowning in clients, devalued and underpaid, just trying to move caseload while their existence “proves” the fairness of the system.  Graduate coordinators will plea bargain the bureaucracy, not go to trial for you.  Or better yet, they’ll dump some papers in your lap and tell you to go file them yourself.

This isn’t to say that graduate coordinators are useless, like some human appendix of the bureaucracy.  They function as an early warning system for sick building syndrome, since they’re tethered to their desks while profs and grads breeze in and out.  They can also be a handy source of do’s-and-dont’s where norms of collegiality are concerned.  But mostly they know a lot of shit.  It’s hard to say what portion of their headspace is dedicated to errata about this form or that policy, but ask the right questions and you can always learn something useful.

That’s why I’m knocking on the door of Tammy-Sue, the graduate coordinator for my department.  She’s shoehorned into one of the “small” offices as they’re euphemistically called, really just a broom closet with a sealed window on one end and a nameplated door on the other.  There’s barely room for her turn sideways to welcome me.  Limpid too-black hair dangles in front of her tortoiseshell glasses, and her merle turtleneck sweater seems like a bad choice given the greenhouse effect in her office.  But that’s her deodorant’s problem, not mine.

 “Hey Tammy-Sue.”  I wedge myself into the visitor’s chair, located right behind the door.  “I need to ask you – ”

“For a favor,” Tammy-Sue interrupts.  She’s giving me an evil den mother grin, tap-tap-tapping the desk with dangerously long fingernails.  “I know how you operate, kiddo.  You only bug me when you need a favor.”

At least we can laugh about my machinations together.  Somebody else might be pissed, but not Tammy-Sue.  It reminds me that she’s painfully human, drawn to us grad students – her brood, as she calls us – because she and her husband are still trying to conceive at fortysomething.

She sips from a coffee mug that says I JUST SAY NO TO CHOCOLATE BUT IT NEVER LISTENS.  I can’t believe she’s drinking anything hot in this torrid office.  “What kind of favor do you need?”

“Just the information kind.  I’ve been poking around for sources of more funding, and I discovered this thing called a supplemental grant.  Sounds like more funding awarded ad hoc – just what I need to survive in Mexico next year.  What can you tell me about it?”

“Not much, really.  Supplementals are only for faculty.  Graduate students don’t qualify for them.”  Tammy-Sue folds her pale hands.  Easy question, easy answer.

“But what is a supplemental grant?  I couldn’t even find a definition.”

“That’s because supplementals are actually a type of purchase requisition, drawn against a capital improvement budget at the university level.  They’re only for emergency one-time expenses that a department can’t be expected to budget for.  I’ve heard some of the faculty in Astronomy will get supplementals, to repair equipment at Mount Wilson Observatory that was damaged in the Station Fire.  But they’re rare in the social sciences.  I can’t tell you the last time someone in Latin American Studies got one.”

“I can.  Cecilia Snyder back in the 1980s.  And she was a grad student, not faculty.”

“You have been poking around, haven’t you?”  Tammy-Sue adjusts her glasses to see me better.  “That was before my time.  All I know is that Cecilia got a supplemental to preserve and organize an abandoned archive in Ecuador.  Apparently it was like a home renovation project in the Amazon rainforest.  She had to hire a local work crew, rebuild the roof and floor, salvage the documents, things like that.  With the blessing of the Ecuadorian government, of course.”

“Of course,” I nod, and perspiration drips off my chin.  What impoverished South American country wouldn’t love a free jobs program to preserve their history?  “So how did Cecilia manage to land a supplemental when it’s supposed to be impossible?”

“It was special circumstances, I’m sure.  Extraordinary circumstances.”

“It was Hercules.”

“And that.”  Tammy-Sue grins evilly again.  Both of us know how this department works.

“What did Hercules have to do, go to the dean?  He went all the way to the dean, didn’t he?  Fucking A.”  Despite myself, I’m coming down with a bad case of Hercules admiration.

“I don’t know what it took.  And I don’t want to know.”

“How much did Hercules get for Cecilia?”

“I have no idea.  Michelle probably has it in her files somewhere.  But I wouldn’t even know where to begin to look.”  Michelle was the previous graduate coordinator.  Tammy-Sue inherited her files like a future generation inherits a toxic waste site.  She glances tiredly at the shelves above her desk, bowed with three-ring binders and a fan spinning uselessly.

I take the hint.  “Nah, that’s okay.  Don’t waste your time looking.  But I’m curious – did anybody else in the department have to sign off?”

“Who knows?  It didn’t happen on my watch.”

“But if you had to guess?”

“If I had to guess, then no.  Probably not.  Assuming the UCLA back then was anything like the UCLA now, the whole thing must’ve happened outside of channels.”  The words make Tammy-Sue recoil, as if somebody just told a scatological joke in front of her.  Her career depends on doing things inside of channels.  Following official procedures.  Documenting compliance with mounds of paperwork.

I quickly replay our conversation in my mind.  This is my first and probably last chance to broach the topic with her.  Any information I need, I better ask for it now.  But no further questions occur to me.  “Thanks, Tammy-Sue.  You’re the best.”  I struggle to my feet, plowing through layers of torpid heat.

She’s peering at me, her professional distance eroding into curiosity.  Dangerously long fingernails start tapping the desk again.  “Tell me you’re not seriously thinking about a supplemental.”

“I’m not seriously thinking about a supplemental.”

“Liar.”

I try to laugh, but nothing about my posture or locomotion feels right, as if I’m a giant shambling hotdish.  I bang out the door and into the relative coolness of the hallway.  Add Tammy-Sue’s greenhouse of an office – maybe even Tammy-Sue herself – to the long, long list of shit I won’t miss about UCLA.