Found the Delay

Okay. I missed class today. Not good. I’m just too exhaust­ed, already, and did­n’t get much sleep last night. I hurt hor­ri­bly, I’m nau­se­at­ed, and I have one of those vision-affect­ing headaches. My right hand and foot have been numb most of the day. I can’t get warm. This is nor­mal for get­ting too tired.

My rheuma­tol­o­gist can­not see me any time soon. Reg­is­tra­tion needs to be DONE. I tried my oth­er doc­tor to see if I could get the dis­abil­i­ty let­ter for the school from him—and he’s on vaca­tion until ear­ly June. The reg­is­trar and the dis­abil­i­ty office coor­di­na­tor are both firm—they must have that let­ter or I can­not cross-register.

I very near­ly gave up. I felt like sim­ply with­draw­ing. I’d failed, I can’t do this, I was stu­pid to think I could. I should have found a pro­gram that’s entire­ly online or some­thing. But there was­n’t one in my field of study—believe me, I’ve looked. Extensively.

But I did make one more call, to my advi­sor. And in pre­tend­ing not to be neg­a­tive while talk­ing to him, I did find a lit­tle more ener­gy. We found anoth­er three cours­es. One of them is of ques­tion­able neces­si­ty, but maybe it’ll be use­ful. And it’s on Mon­day evenings—I’d real­ly hoped to avoid night class­es. I have four class­es every Mon­day. That isn’t going to be easy, physically.

The finan­cial aid direc­tor final­ly admit­ted that yes, the delay is tru­ly with them, right there at SPSU—not with “the gov­’mint” as peo­ple there kept chant­i­ng. In fact, the delay is with her. That per­son who was fired was the only one who han­dled “ver­i­fi­ca­tion.” She was fired, yes, because she was just sit­ting on all that paper­work. The direc­tor is tak­ing all that stuff home this week­end to do it. After she’s done her thing, THEN she enters it into the com­put­er sys­tem to go to the fed­er­al folks. And it takes at least one busi­ness day after she does that for award let­ters to happen—if there’s NOTHING wrong. And after that, stu­dent loan appli­ca­tions are made to lenders, who do their thing.

That list of stu­dents whose class­es were to be dropped by the end of the day yes­ter­day because their fees had­n’t been paid had over 300 names on it, accord­ing to my advi­sor. There were only 50 or so names on it after the finan­cial aid direc­tor got involved. She told me she’d arranged it so that those of us who’d been delayed would­n’t be dropped because of it. That’s 250+ people.

The finan­cial aid direc­tor is a very nice woman, Helen. I like Helen. I feel very bad for Helen right now, but hav­ing been a man­ag­er who had to deal with the shit caused by a bad sub­or­di­nate, I real­ize that’s part of the job. I can’t real­ly be mad at Helen, but I am angry. I don’t do well with vague anger with nowhere to put it. I don’t have a name or face for The Fired Employ­ee. I know it was female.

I’m try­ing not to let this stuff affect my feel­ings toward SPSU, but it isn’t par­tic­u­lar­ly easy. It occurs to me that maybe I should talk about the good stuff so that I remem­ber it more.

First, there’s my advi­sor, Dr. Stevens. He’s great. I wor­ried a lit­tle bit about him judg­ing me based on the fact that I’m fat—but that’s me and what I read into some­one who is very fit and active, not any­thing he has said or done. My bag­gage. The man is incred­i­bly ener­getic and pos­i­tive. I fig­ured he’d be sick of hear­ing from me already, but he isn’t. He is a major plus. He said some­thing to me today about me being the kind of stu­dent who real­ly makes the pro­gram proud, and I just glowed. I real­ly need­ed that right then.

The finan­cial aid direc­tor, Helen, is a very nice per­son. She was so impressed with how Katie answered the phone and took a mes­sage one day that she’s been prais­ing Katie all over cam­pus, say­ing that she’d hire her in a minute if she were old enough. She obvi­ous­ly cares a great deal about stu­dents and wants to work with them to help them get the funds they need for their education.

Mar­i­lyn is the lady who eval­u­ates trans­fer cred­its. She remem­bered me when we met at ori­en­ta­tion, and she has been very help­ful. The fact that she knew my name just blew me away—one of the ben­e­fits of a rel­a­tive­ly small school, I suppose.

Dr. Smith teach­es my TCOM class. He is very approach­able and friend­ly. I’m enjoy­ing the course so far. He’s the coor­di­na­tor of the stu­dent chap­ter of the Soci­ety for Tech­ni­cal Com­mu­ni­ca­tors. I need to remem­ber to ask him about that.

Mr. Vick­rey seems like a very nice fel­low. I hope he does­n’t hate me for miss­ing class today—I did email him. I am try­ing to stop think­ing of him as “that guy who talks like Steve Nelson.”

I spoke with the teacher of the com­put­er class I’ll be tak­ing on the phone today. He was not only approach­able but very fun­ny. Yes, it’s a very basic course, but know­ing that he has a sense of humor makes me look for­ward to it more.

Four of my cours­es are in one build­ing now. It’s nice­ly acces­si­ble. The oth­er is in the next build­ing over, and the teacher told me the class is on the ground floor. That’s some­thing he’d def­i­nite­ly notice since he uses a cane. This is all good. I know where the park­ing lot clos­est to those two class­es is.

There are three class­es I haven’t been to yet. Only one of them has a text­book. It’s avail­able used and costs about $40–45. I have a book­store cred­it for over $70 after return­ing the math text, so I won’t have to spend more mon­ey on books. That’s def­i­nite­ly A Good Thing.

Helen did promise that she IS doing the finan­cial aid paper­work over the week­end. That’s cer­tain­ly bet­ter than hav­ing it just sit­ting and waiting.

I’m study­ing tech­ni­cal com­mu­ni­ca­tions. I already know that I enjoy doing it and that I’m good at it. There’s no vague “well I THINK I might like that” at this point in my life, and cer­tain­ty is won­der­ful. There are only two schools in Geor­gia offer­ing a bach­e­lor’s degree in this sub­ject, SPSU and Mer­cer in Macon. I think I’m where I should be.

That’s bet­ter.