Alone and Unobserved

I honestly thought I would be able to start this semester off without a financial-aid-fueled catastrophe. Last semester, of course, there was the whole promissory-note affair, and then the short-term-loan debacle, and of course the short-term-loan-repayment unpleasantness. This year I’m still on the old promissory note, so I figured my loan would come through in time for me to avoid a short-term loan, and everything would be dandy.

Oh, how shockingly naïve I am sometimes.

Because of course when I went to add a class yesterday, I discovered that the tuition office had placed a hold on my account, preventing me from doing pretty much anything. When I called the tuition office to ask wherefore the hold, the woman told me that the Graduate School had “removed my graduate tuition benefit,” causing the financial aid office to freeze my financial aid funds while they audit my account, thus inciting the tuition office to place the aforementioned hold on my account. The tuition office unfortunately couldn’t remove the hold until the previous two matters had been cleared up.

Well.

I called the financial aid office, but naturally their line was busy with all the calls they were getting from other students they are in the process of screwing over. So I emailed them yesterday, asking them to please let me know more about what was going on. I received their reply today. The salient points:

• I owe money for tuition from last semester.
• I have a credit on my account that is more than enough to pay off the shortfall.
• The financial aid office is unable to remove the hold on my account because it’s not their hold, but I can contact the tuition office to see if the excess funds can be applied to the negative balance.

I see.

So apparently the tuition office won’t remove the hold until financial aid unfreezes my account, and financial aid says they can’t do anything—it’s all the tuition office’s responsibility. It’s like one of those frustrating metal puzzles where in order to move Piece A you have to move Piece B, which is being held in place by Piece C, which is wedged immovably up against piece A . . .

In any case, here is my interpretation of the whole matter. At the beginning of last semester, I was working half-time for the math department, and was thus eligible for a half-tuition waiver (the “graduate tuition benefit” mentioned above). In October, when I accepted the three-quarter-time position at the S&mdash Public Library, I quit my job with the math department, and was thus no longer eligible for the waiver. Like the helpful person I am, I immediately went to the tuition office and informed them of this, and paid the rest of my tuition—the part that had previously been waived under the graduate tuition benefit. Unfortunately, since the waiver was still in place, it could not immediately be applied to my tuition, so it has apparently just been sitting aimlessly around in my student account ever since.

At the beginning of this semester, when the Graduate School finally realized that I had retroactively not been eligible for the waiver, they removed the benefit—thus suddenly causing me to be behind on last semester’s tuition, which made the financial aid department freeze my account, which led to the tuition office placing the hold on my account. Which means a) I can’t add one of the classes I need to graduate, and b) I can’t afford tuition, which is due in ten days. Yippee!