About a year ago I found out I would be losing the job I had held for the previous 4 years. My department was on the chopping block for reasons I still can’t comprehend. (Corporate politics are even more confusing than government politics.) In February of this year, my employment finally ended, and I still had no real prospects.
I was fortunate enough to have a severance package to sustain me after the fallout, but the things I had to do to secure that package still haunt me. The rest of the management team and I had the pleasure of training our replacements, and then dropping a bomb on the lives of all those who worked for us. These people were good employees for the most part. They trusted us while we drove the train toward the brick wall at the end of the tunnel.
The whole experience left me feeling like a giant tool in an orgy of corporate stupidity. I don’t think I was ever really cut out for management. It’s no small wonder that I didn’t make the right impression when interviewing for similar positions.
I decided it was time for a career change. I was already taking one class at a time toward a graphic design degree, so I made up my mind to go full time. A lot of the people I had formerly supervised were part-timers going to college full-time. We paid them the wages of a plow animal in a third world country, and they managed to survive with the help of Pell Grants and student loans. I figured, if they could do it, why couldn’t I?
So I got a part time job that offered a super flexible schedule. With the reduced hours, and lower pay scale, I’d be making about 70% less, but hey that’s what financial aid is for right?
Pell Grants are “need based.” They determine your “need” based on the cost of tuition, housing, books, etc. Then they determine your “estimated financial contribution” based on your income and your family’s income, if you are less than 24 years old. The trick is that they look at your income from the previous year’s tax return.
In my case, I didn’t immediately qualify for a Pell Grant because I made too much money the year before. (Somehow I still managed to stay broke all the time. I must have had a cocaine habit I wasn’t aware of.) Of course I’m not going to make anywhere near the same amount of money this year as I did last year, so that leaves me in an awkward position: broke but considered too rich for aid.
Never fear, the system has a form for every eventuality. There is something called a “special circumstances” form for cases like mine, where a person has gone from full time to part time employment. It sounds simple, but there’s a catch. You can’t file the form until 10 weeks after you ended your full time employment.
Ok, so for a month and a half you either take out extra student loans, or you are on your own. That doesn’t sound too bad. I enrolled full-time, filed the form exactly 10 weeks after my severance ran out, and waited. And waited. And waited. The funds from my student loans began to dwindle, and I started to get a little nervous.
I called to check on the status of my application, and a woman informed me that the special circumstances form took a minimum of 8 weeks to process. Ok, so now I we’re talking at 18 weeks from the day I “ended” full time employment. I was starting to see a lot of ramen noodles in my future.
I let another 9 weeks go by before I called again. The person on the phone stressed it was a “minimum” of 8 weeks, and could be longer. At this point I applied for an additional student loan, this time unsubsidized. I’ve been calling every week to check on the status of my application, and finally someone gave me an estimate: another 6 weeks.
If I actually hear something in 6 weeks, that will bring the grand total up to 6 and a half months from the time I ended my full time income before I get a Pell Grant, and of course there’s no guarantee I’ll even get one.
Meanwhile, I watched my government put together a 700 billion dollar blank check for some of the biggest scumbags in the history of earth. How long did that take? About a month.
I got my first job when I was 16. I’ve been paying taxes for a long time. Now I just want a little help to better myself. So, Uncle Sam, this song is for you: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URz1qJ3aC4M
Filed under: Blog by Ed
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Topics: School
