Paying for stuff.

Getting my financial aid this week has been sorta annoying. Not that annoying; the people in the Financial Aid and Student Payments office are very nice people, so the annoyances have nothing to do with them at all. Mainly, it’s how one little thing on my application for financial aid managed to stretch out my application process until next Tuesday.

Okay, I’ll begin at the beginning. I’m in the Teacher Education Program. I’ve been in it since last fall. I’m doing a sort-of package deal where I do the TEP, then take another semester and end up with a Master of Arts. Back when I applied to get into the program, I indicated that this was what I wanted to do: get an M.A. So, when they accepted me into the program, they didn’t actually accept me into the TEP; they accepted me into the M.A. program. But I’m in the TEP. Confusing? Sorta.

When I applied for financial aid last year, I indicated that I was going for an M.A. When I applied this year, I indicated that I was currently in the TEP. It’s a small difference, but it has obnoxious repercussions, the main one being that I have never formally been accepted into the TEP. I’ve been taking all the classes; I’ve been working on the paperwork; the head of the program is my faculty adviser… but I’m not actually in the program. I’m in another program.

So, in order to get financial aid, I needed a letter of acceptance from the TEP in my file, which I don’t have because I wasn’t actually accepted by them. (Even though, as I said, I’m doing the program.)

You’d think it would be an easy thing to get this letter, but apparently it isn’t, so I decided to do the simpler thing and change my application. Except that took five days to process. And since the end of the five days is Tuesday, and the last day to pay for classes (or they get dropped) was today, I decided to bite the bullet and pay for classes. With money I don’t have.

Fortunately, the school has a payment program. The first payment is due on Sep. 28. By the time I have to make the first payment (which, sadly, is the only payment I could actually afford) the financial aid will be approved, and I can joyfully take out another future-hobbling student loan, and pay it. (Which the state says it will pay back if I teach in the state, but that all depends on whether there will be any money left after our idiot governor and idiot legislature get over their fights and special elections.)

By the way: There is next to no scholarship money or grants for graduate-level work. There is some; you can scrape it together from private organizations who will fund you because they like you personally. I don’t happen to personally know too many billionaires so I’m kinda stuck paying for all this myself. It is, of course, my own bloody fault for goofing off in high school when I could have been getting Cal Grant-worthy grades.

So I’m sorta paid up, even though no money has actually been transferred yet. In the meanwhile I can post blogs over the college’s internet service, then go to bed because of that 8 a.m. Saturday class I just (sorta) paid for.