Back to School

I've registered for a math class this semester. As much as I would love to sign up for a full schedule, I just can't. I've come to accept that I cannot be a full time student at this point in my life, and it isn't due to lack of commitment or motivation... it's because of a lot of little things that frankly irritate me beyond belief. Thinking about it just evokes this overwhelming feeling of hopelessness... yes, i am dramatic... but it's only because I really want and need to go to school, and I can feel my brain shrinking due to inactivity. I sleep on my back because I'm afraid to wake up to pieces of unused cerebral matter on my pillow.

I can't go to school full time because I have to make money. I have responsibilities that I didn't really ask for, but will be fortunate to have in the long term. Right now, they hinder things. And by "they", I mean my mortgage and the costs associated with owning a home.

My cost of living is high. I have to get a well paying job to survive. I have to work full time. I can't get a better job without education. I cannot go to school full time because I am working full time. I cannot get financial aid to compensate for the money I'd be out if I went to school full-time. I get less aid for going half-time. So my only choice is to hardly go to school at all, which is fine with me because I need to do something. So at this point, I hardly qualify for aid at all... just a waiver for my school fees. I'm thankful for this, but there's a lot of running around in order to get this waiver. Nothing in life is free. My class will not cost me money, but it will cost a lot of effort and time. I have to resubmit papers that I have already submitted, namely my parents' death certificates.
Now I know this is how the world works, sometimes you just have to be repetitive to be part of the system, the bureaucracy, etc etc deal with it already my darling this is the way it goes...
But I am bit tired of schlepping my parents' death certificates back and forth to the financial aid office, I'm tired of the hardly audible "aww" when I hand them to the clerk, and the way they look at my date of birth to try and make sense of the situation. I wouldn't mind all of this if their sympathy resulted in more financial aid... hell, I'll bring in a photo album and shed some tears if the could just help me go to school full time. I have no problem playing the orphan card because frankly, my father would encourage me to do it. It's not something that I can change, so I might as well get the best use out of it.

Before I go through all of this fee waiver stuff, I have to fill out the FAFSA. This is the federal aid application which I have memorized by now and gotten absolutely nothing from. It specifically asks if I am an orphan so that my parents' finances are omitted. It also qualifies me as an independent student... which works against me. In a nutshell, it basically tells me : "We have determined that you can spend 20% of your yearly income on school, and since your tuition is less than that, we aren't going to help you. You are a big girl now, roll with it and make it on your own, my dear."

So tonight I will go home, dig up the necessary paperwork, hopefully get my classes for free and ravenously start school again. In the end, I still feel fortunate that I have these facilities available to me, that I can become educated, even if getting there requires a melodramatic blog post and a bit of paper shuffling.

But the most important question remains:
What will I wear for my first day night of school??? omg omg