My Brain Hurts--Part 1 of 2

I've been meaning to update y'all about school, but these last couple weeks have been crazy and ridiculous and basically my brain has been hurting. Want to know why? Well... let's start at the top:

Let's first separate the two reasons why my brain has been hurting. One deals with class, the other deals with the crappy bureaucracy and regulations that is the UTD financial aid/bursar's office. Part 1 is the latter...

Thinking that my tuition should already be taken care of because I had accepted various loans and grants from Financial Aid, I didn't really worry about it too much until I noticed that my account a few days after the money was supposed to be disbursed wasn't showing up. I thought it was odd but thought... well maybe it just takes awhile to register. UTD has been I found out pretty slow in everything it does.

But, by Monday (the 3rd day of classes) it was still not showing up and I started worrying. I called the financial aid office on Monday and the machine said that wait times on the phone would take a long time so I should email them because it'd be faster. Ok, I thought, so I did. (Just so you know, as of today, I have yet to receive an email back and I sent both the general financial aid office address and the counselor over my part of the alphabet an email 2 and a half weeks ago.) Figuring that their machine was lying to me, I decided I would call them and just suffer through the wait time. I called them as I left work on Tuesday and as I pulled up to my house (a half hour later) they answered.

Apparently it was good that I called. They were holding my funds because I was registered as a full-time student, but I wasn't taking enough hours to be a full-time student. The lady then said it can be easily fixed I just have to send them an "Hours Adjustment" form, and once they process it, the money will go through. Ok, I thought, easy fix, no problem. As soon as I hung up the phone with her I printed out the form (I won't go into how ridiculous I thought it all was) and faxed it to them. Then on Thursday (when still nothing was showing up), I thought, I should call them just to make sure they got my fax.

So again, I called on Thursday as I left work. This time after 40 min. and I had changed clothes and was getting ready to head to the gym, they answered. Guess what they said? They didn't receive my fax. The chick couldn't find it. Ok fine, I will fax it again on a real life fax machine (I had used the computer before), and the lady on the phone assured me that my form would be processed before the deadline to pay (the following Friday).

Friday morning I sent a fax, this time from an actual machine at work and decided I should call them right after I send it just to make sure. Yeah... on Fridays, their office doesn't open till 1pm. So, I waited around till a little after 1pm to call them up to make sure they got a fax. This time I was on hold for 47 minutes before someone answered, and... surprise, surprise, this chick tells me again that they didn't receive the fax. By this point I'm more than angry since I've sent this form twice already and both times it hadn't gotten received. Realizing my frustration the girl tells me to scan it in and email it directly to her.

Well either I missed a zero in her email or she missed one, but I had a heck of a time emailing it to her. But, with the help of a coworker and the student directory, I finally got the right email and sent her my stupid form. She emails me back saying she received it and says that it'll take 5 to 7 business days to process. Ummm... it better be processed by Sept. 3rd since that's the freakin' deadline. I of course emailed her a similar statement in a nicer way than that, and she responds that she can't guarantee it and that I should seek out alternative payment like paying out of pocket, setting up a payment plan, or getting an emergency tuition note from the school.

After a couple days of cooling off because I was so mad, on Sunday I decide, just to be on the safe side, I'll go ahead and get the emergency loan from the school and figured, it would get paid off when the financial aid money came in so it's not like I needed to really worry about paying it.

On Monday I check my account... my form got processed and my loan money has gone through. Except, it still says I owe the stupid emergency loan. I take a closer look at my account and they have halved all of my loans and grants that I had been awarded (which you then have to halve again for each semester). The problem is I had only accepted a little bit of one of the loans anyway cause I didn't need all of it, but they halved what I had accepted not what I had been awarded.

This is when I broke down and called my dad crying. My dad told me he'd go with me to the financial aid office to get everything straightened out the next day. I hung up, drove to class, and sat in my car and cried some more. Mainly because I was tired of dealing with this financial aid crap and worrying about it, but then it turned into me thinking maybe I wasn't cut out for a Master's if I couldn't even handle dealing with the financial aid crap. Not one of my finest moments.

On Tuesday morning, my dad came with me to the financial aid office and waited in line with me for an hour and a half, and then sat and waited another 15 to 20 minutes for one of the head-guys to get out of a meeting, and then talked to the head guy to get it all straightened out. Isn't my dad great? I did buy him lunch afterwards though, so maybe that's why he stuck around.

Anyway, even the head guy thought what had happened was weird and didn't make sense (there were some other charges showing up on my account that shouldn't have been there) and he went over to talk to a guy at the bursar's office who said the same thing. Lovely. But, the head guy fixed it, changed my loan amount (so that I would get a refund) and got rid of the weird charge. He was super nice and very understanding. He was from New York, so we chatted a little bit about it and about how I want to live there cause I'm an editor, etc. It was the one bright moment during this whole debacle.

Now, it's all taken care of, I've gotten my refund, I don't owe, and I don't have anything to worry about.... well at least with financial aid. School on the other hand is another matter.