A Perfect Picture Of Failing Completely

I work for a photography company that specializes in graduation photos, and it is graduation season in these parts, so I’m working hard. We deal with a lot of major universities with hundreds, sometimes thousands of graduates, and it’s up to my department to put the grads’ information into a computer and then send them order forms. The grads, however, can be incredibly stupid.

The university in question is very prestigious and known for its football team. It has a lot of international students, most of whom graduate with honors. Now, our grad cards are not that complex. They have spots for your name, permanent address, parents’ address if it differs, and a checklist describing hair color, ethnicity, etc.

Many people get confused by the address form for some unknown reason. I’ve come to the conclusion that either many graduates cannot see or understand the letter R, so their countries end up being various counties in Michigan, or said counties in Michigan have risen up in rebellion and established themselves as sovereign nations.

But the most hilarious thing came from one of the foreign students. There were three things on this card that didn’t quite add up:

1) Michigan has now been taken over by Jerusalem.

2) Jerusalem is now its own country, having completely separated from Israel.

3) “My parents live on the main street of Jerusalem” is now a valid address.

I would have chalked this up to the language barrier, but entering the rest of her data made me head-desk so hard that I almost knocked myself unconscious. This woman was a Ph.D. student and had lived in the United States for almost ten years. She had a degree in English, having graduated with a minor in ESL.

I have no idea how she messed up that badly.