Not so cheering

[lydy]

I got back the real FAFSA today. (Free Association Federal Student Alligators). It says that I'm not eligible for a Pell Grant, so I would be expected to come up with $5300 per year, plus living expenses. Right now, my medical insurance and prescription drugs are almost $400 a month.

So now, it's dive into Bureaucracy Land!

I've done all the things I can think of that can be done, right now. I've paid my application fee ($20). I've attempted to talk with Financial Aid. They won't even talk with me for 3 or 4 weeks, because it takes between one and two weeks for the government to get the FAFSA (Formal Attire For Student Alliances) to get it to the school, and then another one to two weeks to review them. I have no idea whether being well away from crunch time means they'll process the application faster, or if they'll set it aside to age so as to catch up on filing, typing, and solitaire. It's a bureaucracy, they could do both.

I have a list of the scholarships that they offer. I might be eligible for two of them. If that. "Single White Female, no kids" isn't very marketable these days. A remarkable number of them require that I've graduated from a highschool in Minnesota. Minnesota, Iowa, what's the difference? I mean, I graduated in 1980. Really, the programs and forms are not designed for adults. Some of the scholarships are for "future leaders of the community". Talk about something I do not wish to be. I want to be a troglodyte and have nothing to do with the daily running of the world other than writing the occasional letter to my newspaper or my congresscritter.

Next task is to research what state-wide grants and loans are available. If I knew how to do this, it would be easier, but what the hell, this is the Web. All things are here. Also all wrong things. But I think I can discern between one and the other. A lot of the scams look just like a scam, walk and talk just like a scam, and taste good with plum sauce. If Financial Aid were anything more than the vacuum that is created when someone created a brain trust over there, they would give me information about that. As it is, they could barely manage to remember where their own scholarship applications were.

I'm pretty sure I can do the personal essay. I just have to decide if I do it in this style, or if I do it in that toadying style so common in that kind of application. "All my life, I've wanted to help people. As I've gained more experiences, I've come to realize that people's needs vary widely, and they are not always aware of those needs... Sleep Apnea is a problem that has only recently come to light...As someone who has been diagnosed with sleep apnea..."

It's like mission statements. "All babies must eat." Give me the name of a corporation and four words about what industry it's in and I'll whip you up a "mission" statement of any length you please. For twice the money, I'll include three strategic goals. Tactical goals, now tactical goals cost real money, ($1 per, minimum of 3) because that's when you stop being entirely vague and have to at least give some committees names and -- gods help us all -- mission statements.

[Now, there's an idea for a personal essay. Start off with that rather tamed down, chunk out the proper mission, strategic, tactical, and sub-strategic and/or mission statements, then summarize it with "I really want to be a Polysomnographic Technician, and this seems like it would be a great place to learn that. Really, all babies must eat, and that's what I'm asking from you. (Either, "Please think of me as your baby, and remember that all babies must eat" or recite the mission statement created above. The second is far wiser.)]

Me, my preference would be to use the Mulberry post from a couple of years ago, rewritten and slightly tweaked, but it's too long for this use, I think.]

I've got an appointment with someone in Disability Services. Disability doesn't have any money to give away, but they might have some resources they can steer me towards. Especially help with medical insurance, which will run out and then I'll have to move over to Minnesota Care, which isn't as cheap, and has a waiting period, and yadda. I think the waiting time is 4 months. That's $1600, assuming that my psychiatrist is really, really nice and doesn't charge me for one or two sessions.

I've looked at the placement testing. buttonlass, I owe you forever. I read the info sheet they have on placement testing, and while the English looks to be a breeze, man do I need a lot more algebra than I currently have on tap. I got as far as question 4 out of 11. So, it's some online tutorial for me.

I don't know how I'm going to get to school to become a polysomnographic tech, but I'm going to. There are many deeper, darker chambers of authority into which I can delve. I will use my medical leave and disability shamelessly where needed. I will flirt, flatter, and threaten as necessary. But I Will Be a Polysomnographic (it's fun to type, too) Tech.

Comments

[wild-irises.livejournal.com]

But I Will Be a Polysomnographic (it's fun to type, too) Tech.

That you will!

What I learned about financial aid when my kids were in college

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

So the following info is not completely current, but more recent than when I was in college.

The important thing that you get from the FAFSA is not cutoffs for specific programs, but the total amount that the government thinks you require for basic subsistence. Then the school that you're applying to subtracts that from the amount that they expect you to pay them, which gives you your Need. This is the crucial number.

Then the school financial aid office endeavors to come up with a combination of loans, grants and work-study jobs to fill all or part of your calculated Need, and presents it to you as a financial aid offer. If it doesn't look like enough, you can try explaining to them where there calculations are off (like extraordinarily high medical expenses or whatever) and maybe they'll come back with something better, maybe they won't.

It is almost never worthwhile endeavoring to find specific scholarships for which you qualify. Even if you come up with a source of scholarship money that the school didn't know about (like a special scholarship fund maintained by the Garbage Collectors' of America), this will just reduce the amount that the school offers you from other sources.

[buttonlass.livejournal.com]

I can find my college algebra textbook I think. If that would help you.

[mom23cats.livejournal.com]

don't give up!!!

[lydy.livejournal.com]

I think that I am much stupider than I used to be. I'm using math.com's tutorials, and I've hit a wall on something so simple I can't believe it. I'm having trouble visualizing the relationship between the simple formulas for lines and the formula for the slope of a line. This is easy stuff. I remember the classes barely touching on it and then zooming onto quadratic equations, which were just plain fun. Quadratics are more abstract, so maybe that's why I found them so entertaining. There was that one crystal moment where I could see the square root of negative one. It never became visible again, I had to take it on trust, but there was that moment when I thought I could visualize it. Now, I can't visualize a flat plane with coordinates on it. It's like my fear of reading maps come to life, having grown purple hair and fangs four inches long and claws like a cave bears. And they say my psych meds don't do any damage to my intelligence. It's all age. Bloody hell, I wish I knew which was what.