Blerg.

So it’s been a solid 12 hours since I wrote my last bit, but I’m back.  I need to vent about the way that colleges play with poor college students emotions.

So, as a simple graduate requirement here you are required to take a course at some point in May.  Only two of which actually take place in the region.  All of the others want to ship you off to some remote locale.  It’s supposed to build character or something, and actually is somewhat appealing and exciting sounding.  The only problem with this seemingly flawless plan you may ask?

Well, when May rolls around there is very little of your years financial aid left, even for high need students like myself.  I mean it’s only logical I would want to use it during the year, but you can’t find me any extra?  No?  Just asking. I also need to find a way to pay for summer school, as is the plight of a transfer to a school with a mentally challenged registrar (not that she is actually mentally challenged, just in my encounters with her, she read the college catalogue in 1965, when she first started, and has yet to re-read it.  I mean everything is still the same as in 1965, right?  I love going to the Nickelodeon (That was still real in 1965 right?)).

There is also another problem.  My school is really bad at communication.  They like to think they are really good at it.  They’re all like, I sent an e-mail to you about this like 15 minutes ago and told you, you had to be here.  15 minutes isn’t a whole hell of a lot of time for me to check my e-mail and make it somewhere.

So, I have to go on this trip, and I looked through my available options, and I was like.  Hmm.  India sounds interesting. So I’m gonna go to India.  I don’t know if you’ve ever left the country, but there are a lot of expenses required to get that going.

So I’m going to India, and I have to pay everything for the school, because there is not a lot that they want to pay themselves.  So I’ve been working on getting this paid all semester.  They were like you owe amount X, and over the course of the semester, I gradually paid them amount X.  This is where that whole communication thing comes in.

I paid them amount X.  Then about a week ago, they send my mother a bill saying, Hey you know that you still owe, amount Y correct?  My mother contacts me and says, why the hell do we owe them amount Y?  Now my understanding was that once I paid everything, then everything would be paid.  Not once I paid everything, then I owed them something else. That does not make sense to me.

So I thought on it.  Realizing that I had applied for a travel grant, there had been communication issues, and I needed to resolve them because this money that I had given up on could cover amount Y.  So communication issues: I submitted the application, explaining that I did not have a GPA because I was transfer.  The told me, that is absolutely fine.  I receive a letter in the mail about 2 weeks later informing me that because I don’t have a GPA I am completely ineligible for this award.  Wait a second…?

So I talk to them at the beginning of the semester, and they inform me that I can appeal it since they said that shouldn’t affect my money receiving ability.  So I appeal it.  In February.  Come mid April, I had still heard nothing so I politely inquire into the situation, and am informed that they forgot about, and they should be able to get a decision by Wednesday.  Okay…

Wednesday comes, and I am denied a transcript request because I was charged amount Y a week ago, and it hasn’t been paid.  Who really has $725 to just pass out while they’re in college.  I sure as hell don’t. But I need this transcript so I can take classes this summer, because we offer like 3 summer classes, which are all uniquely useless to me(and which are the only ones you can take if you want summer financial aid, which I am apparently eligible for, really college?  Thanks).

So I talk to the Business office. Turns out that the money went straight to spending money, despite the fact that I said I needed it to cover amount Y.  Useless.  Why do I even try to communicate?

So after being informed that I had $690 in spending money, I’m find out that they messed up and that is actually not my spending money.

Thanks for getting my hopes up College.

Learn to communicate.

On a separate, but related note, they informed that my mother was sent a $1030 check in January.  I never received the fruits of this check.  According to her, she didn’t either.  They claim it was deposited.  But not in her bank account.   What are you talking about school?  I want my $1030!!