They’re not really out to get me. I do understand that, now. Once I would have felt personally attacked (okay, I still do. Just now I know it’s not reasonable.) Rules exist because people abuse the system. Just like my (work) school has a uniform policy because it’s harder to enforce a looser code (no, really. It IS.) the financial aid system has rules about the percent of classes attempted versus completed to keep people from wasting money-not-theirs on classes they’re dropping.
I get that. The problem comes in when the rules don’t take extenuating circumstances into account, and people are too married to the rules to see that enforcing them in this instance is an injustice.
When I was young, I tried going to college. Part time and paying my own way, I was doing fine until I decided it was taking too long. I attempted 17 credit hours in one semester, while working full time. I crashed and burned. I didn’t go back for twenty years.
When I returned last fall, I was on academic probation. I thought it was because of my grades in that last semester, and didn’t worry about it. Those grades would never happen again, so the probation wouldn’t matter.
Come to find out, it did matter. Down in that part of the Satisfactory Academic Progress explanation that I didn’t understand, it mattered. I dropped so many classes back twenty years ago when I was paying my own way, that my one semester on financial aid where I took two courses and earned A’s in both didn’t make enough difference. If I’d taken eighteen credit hours (while working full time), I could have dug myself out. Seven wasn’t enough.
I can appeal. That’s always an option. But it’s fairly certain I can’t get anything done in two days, which is how much time I have between offices re-opening and the due date for my tuition. Also I have to have documentation, and I don’t really have any proof that I’m not the idiot I was twenty years ago.
Effing rules, man…
Oh NO! *hugs* I hope you can find someone who will help you get this fixed.
I work at a college, and I’d recommend talking to the your school’s equivalent to Dean of Undergraduate STudies; or if they have one, the office that deals with nontraditional students. Also, if you have a major, the chair of that department. Good luck! The ways of university administration are tortuous, but often you can find an actual person or 2 who will be helpful.
Well, the appeal is filed. Now I pay the tuition with my credit card (gulp!) and pray that money comes back to me. Soon.
Guy today was very helpful and nice. He gave me hope, but we’ll see.
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