how irritating is this

Today an email was sent out to all the students in the program regarding a new fellowship. Naturally since the focus is on access and policy issues related to low-income students I was interested. As I read through the description I saw that the fellowship would be awarded from mid-April 2007 to mid-April 2008. Seemed like a short time line to get the application in, but I've worked with shorter deadlines. So I forged ahead. Sure enough: deadline TODAY! WHAT? You have got to be kidding me. I would have appreciated at least a couple days of lead time. Granted, I wouldn't have submitted it until today anyway, but still at least I would have had time to think about it, let it roll around in my head for a few hours.

This is just one example of the systematic way in which our program has continuously left students out or unaware of potential opportunities. It might be argued that we are adults and are responsible for discovering those opportunities on our own. But dammit! If that was the case I could have read everything on my own, wrote papers, gone to conferences, and done research without ever coming to graduate school. We're here to learn from these people. Don't they get that? Don't they understand that if we succeed as students and graduates that it reflects well on their career? Or perhaps they just don't care.