Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Poop Sundae with a Cherry on Top

Yesterday was a poop sundae with a cherry on top. Let me preface this. At the halfway point in the semester, I still hadn't seen my loan money that I was approved for, so I called the financial aid office at BYU and the little girl on the phone told me that I since I only had 5.5 credits and needed 6 credits to get the loan, that I needed to add a .5-credit block class (taken the second half of the semester). So I scramble to find a class that would be even remotely interesting/relevant, and that I can fit into my schedule. I add the class, get the loan money, and pay off my fall tuition. Then, about a week ago, I notice that I owe BYU $4000 (repayment on my loan that I just barely got, in addition to winter's tuition). So I call them up and a new girl tells me that they've had some gliches in the system and that they are working on getting it fixed, that I should check back on Monday (2 days ago) and if it still says that I owe, to call back again.
Monday rolls around and guess what? I still owe $4000. Surprise, surprise. So I call back to their office and this girl puts me on hold for 15 minutes trying to get an answer for me. She comes back on the line and tells me that since I haven't been taking 6 credits consecutively over the entire semester, I was ineligible for that loan they gave me. My only option would be to come in and talk to a financial counselor and talk about payment options. So I make an appointment to talk to this counselor yesterday.

Jed and I get to his office and he tells us, after we'd been waiting outside for 15 minutes, that he had been on the phone with someone who was looking in to my situation and seeing what my options are, and checking to see if 6 credit hours over the semester would be sufficient (that would make sense, right? I'd be getting 6 hours whether it was each block, or total). So she calls back and tells us that there is no way that I could get that money back and that I do, in fact, owe them $4000 immediately. Are you freaking serious?? At this point I'm irrate! It was their office who approved the loan, it was their office who advised me to add another class that I don't care about or need, it was their office who dispersed the loan to me, and now it is their office who has revoked my loan and is now asking me to repay that money ASAP. I did nothing wrong. I simply did what I was told by their office. Where am I supposed to come up with $4000 by the end of the year?? That's the whole reason we got the loan in the first place - because we couldn't pay tuition out of our pocket!! (By the way, it's too late for me to drop that class they advised me to add. Now not only do I have to take this unnecessary class, but I have to pay for that too!)
Their advice to me: Take out double what I was asking for winter, and use that extra to pay back fall tuition. But while I wait for that loan to come in, I have to call the collections department of BYU like once a week to recite my case and make sure I don't get holds on my account, or get sent to collections. It's ridiculous! For the record: This is not the first time that I've had to deal with the BYU financial department. They are the worst.
**Any advice?? Anyone??**

I go out to my car (that a certain other person told me to park in a permit-only teacher parking lot) and there's a parking officer standing by my car. Since I've gotten two tickets this semester (both times a certain other person told me "oh, you'll be fine to park here"), I am on the "impound list". If I hadn't showed up before he left, I would have come out to a boot on my car. I would have had to pay for the boot, and given them my info. So I guess it's a good thing I came out when I did, however, I had to give them mine and Jed's info so they would have it in case my car was illegally parked again. I gave them my old TX license and wrong phones numbers. I was scared. I just won't park on campus anymore... :\

So after I finish with that, I picked Jed up on the other side of campus (where he had gone to drop off an assignment - thank goodness he wasn't with me when I went out to my car because I told them that he was the BYU student of the family...) and we hauled butt up to Salt Lake for my monthly weight check-up. Here's the cherry on top! I "lost" 8 pounds this month!! Well, I lost 3, but 5 pounds were converted from fat mass to lean mass!! So technically, I lost 8 POUNDS!! I know it would have been more if I had been more disciplined, but shoot! I'll take it! :D

4 comments:

cornnut32 said...

byu's financial aid office SUCKS.

when we got married, i asked about when we needed to file the fafsa so we could get student aid as a married couple. they said within the month we were getting married. since school started the day after we got back from our honeymoon, i filed the week before the wedding.

yeah. they said we had to file AFTER the wedding AFTER i'd already filed, so neither of us got ANY help because we had to turn in our parents taxes.

i was pissed.

Manda McDaniel said...

The financial aid office bites, and parking is even worse. I'm sorry it was such a poopy day! At least there was some good news! Congrats on all the hard work. And hurry and get out of school. It's the only way to go :)

Amelia said...

Crazy that you said we should hang out soon cause the same time you were leaving that comment I was leaving a comment on cornnut's blog about how the three of us should hang out again. Also, I talked to aubry about doing that triple date that we have been planning forever. We were thinking this upcoming Monday night. would that work for yall?

Amelia said...

yes! I hope that we can go, it sounds like it will be way fun. okay, so now we need to think about what we want to do for Monday night.... any ideas? Think about it and I will call you sometime this weekend and we can share ideas.