school and stuff

Yesterday I had a financial aid meeting at the Akron Institute. I have been planning on attending an 18 month program to get my Associate of Applied Sciences with special training in Dental Assisting. I could only get an appointment at 5pm, because my mom had to be with me. Apparently, even though I have a 4 month old daughter, she and I are considered dependents of my mother because we live with her. (regardless of the fact that I still am responsible for our food/formula, diapers, wipes, medical, etc) As it was, my mom ended up leaving work 20 minutes later than originally intended and I was going to be late for my appointment. I know, I know, reschedule right? NO. I tried to get this all done back in April, but there was no way it was going to work out that soon after having the baby, so the financial advisor had told me to wait until July and call back. (which I was doing) I received an email, as well as a phone call, that my application was going to be cancelled due to my inability to come in for a financial planning meeting. I was shocked. I got in touch with them and scheduled a meeting for Tuesday, June 29. The very next day I received an email saying that my application had officially been cancelled because I hadn't gotten back to them. I called, ranted, got it fixed, and waited for Tuesday to arrive.

I got lucky at work that day. I got there at 7am, and found out that both the store manager AND the assistant store manager had the day completely off. That meant that the shift managers (my level of management) were running the store by themselves. Yay!! No bitching, no berating, just us and our crew. Happy day! I ended up going home early, unfortunately. But that's what you get when you're the newer manager, make more than crew, and labor percentages are way too high. So off I went. I went home and changed, then was gone again. I went to the bank to withdraw some money, bought the tickets for the midnight showing of Eclipse (which was absolutely friggin amazing by the way...more blogging on that next), and waited for mom to get home.

At 4:45, I started freaking out. Mom was not home yet and I hadn't heard from her since 2:00. Luckily, she called me just then and I found out that she had gotten stuck doing something at work and it didn't allow her to be out in time. So, here I am, freaking out because I'm worried that the school is going to cancel my application and I'm going to have to wait ANOTHER 6 months to go to school. This is enough to make me cry, seeing as I had already had to wait 6 months to begin with. Anyways, I called the school and let them know I was "on my way" and I would be late. They marked me down as 15 minutes late, even though I knew it could be later. Mom got here, I headed out the door and we hauled ass. I gotta say, I love my mom :) She knew this was important and made sure I got there.

So here we are, at the school, in the financial aid office. I gave her our information, let her know about my particular situation, and waited for the numbers to be shown. Yep, I sat and waited as she told me the piddly amount that I qualify for on the pell, and oh yeah, I DON'T qualify for ANYTHING ELSE at THAT school because they only offer loans and the pell grant. And because my mom DID get approved on her credit, then they could only offer me a lot less than they normally would in loans. She would have to get parent plus loans that would have to start being repaid in 60 days. I kept telling her that there was NO WAY we could possibly do that (I had to have told her like 3 or 4 times) and each time, she would just look at my mom and say "well take some time to think about it and get back to me". As if my mom was the one who was going to have the say so about what happened anyway! phaw! (as my sister would say) I finally got fed up and blurted out that it didn't make any sense that I qualified for $35,000 out of high school to go to Albright, but only a couple thousand now. She THEN proceeded to explain to me that it was a different case for regular colleges. Apparently, tech schools have less financial aid available to them. This particular school only has the pell grant and loans. She said even Stark State (which also has the same exact program) had more to offer. THEN she said the magic words, which both eased my mind and pissed me off at the same time: "If you went to the University of Akron right now, you'd go for free". Well then, what the HELL was I doing in that office in the first place? Why couldn't you have told me this 6 FUCKING MONTHS AGO when I first started asking about school?!?!?! I wouldn't have wasted my time. Plus, I would've already been in summer classes for the general education classes! 6 months of my time absolutely completely totally WASTED by this greedy tech school that didn't inform me properly in the first place!

So, we walked out of the office, and my mom let me vent (adding in a bit of a rant about it herself) and I'm now starting the process to go to the University of Akron. I looked through the majors, and while Theatre is still a passion of mine, I picked out a major that I liked that I would also be able to turn around and make money at all the time. I picked out the Geology/Earth Science field. It includes some travel, which is fine, because I can arrange Donnie's visitations to be during the times that I have to be gone. Besides, that won't happen until after my sophomore year anyways. I submitted the application online today, went to my high school and turned in the paper to have my transcripts sent to the college, and made out the check for the application fee. Now all I have to do is mail the payment, or wait until next week when we get back from picking up Mackenzie and go down to the school to talk to the admissions department and give it to them then. I already left the message for the admissions lady at the local campus.

I can't tell you how relieved I am that this is all going to go in my favor now, but OH MY GOD! To think I could already have been in school and could've had some classes out of the way already...it's just crazy! I can't believe they were so greedy! I told them back in the spring that the ONLY way I'd be able to go to their school is if I got enough in financial aid and my OWN loans to go because my mom couldn't help AT ALL. So either they are greedy motherfuckers or just plain fucking ignorant! (yes, that's ig-nor-ant, 3 syllables, for those of you in the loop) roflmao :P