I’m currently in my junior year of college. Throughout my time at a community college, a smaller university, and a large university, one thing has remained constant, and that is each education institution's ability to place incompetent trolls in the financial aid office. Maybe just my friends and I have bad luck, but nearly everyone I know has had at least minor but consistent troubles getting the money they need. In my experience, if you learn to hate one thing about your university, it’s their financial aid office.

I woke up in the morning feeling more refreshed than normal. This always happens to me whenever I know something good is happening that day. The disbursement checks for my financial aid were supposed to be in, and as far as I was concerned not a moment too soon. I had rent and other bills to pay, plus I was going to treat myself and significant other to a nice dinner, which was something we hadn’t been able to enjoy in a while. I drove over to campus in a fantastic mood the whole way, but when I walked through the doors, the trolls struck.

I show up to the counter, request my check, and watch the person start thumbing through the box that was supposed to contain it. Her apologetic look told me right away that the absolute worst case scenario had just occurred. Deleting my expletives shortens this part of the story significantly, but to give you an idea of how our conversation went, I had to be escorted to the back of the room with the supervisor. There I continued to express my deepest concerns about her intelligence, the quality of her staff, and the accuracy of her department’s communication on what was needed to receive financial assistance.

You see, this was not the first time I was victimized. This was in fact the fourth time. Every semester since I started there something had occurred that either caused a delay of some sort, be it minor or major. This time, it happened to be catastrophic. This time the money was already over a month late. The reason being that I had been given the wrong form to fill out, and subsequently given the wrong one again when they had me come back to fix it. Then I had waited several days for an e-mail from their office confirming that they had received the documentation they said the needed. By the way, they refused to take this documentation the very first time I came in, because allegedly it wasn’t necessary, but I digress. I call them and find out that apparently the fax was too dark and they couldn’t use it. Needless to say I was very pleased they had informed me of this on their own. So now we flash forward to what was supposed to be the resolution, when I come in to get the check they told me would be there, and it isn’t. They didn’t send in my paperwork to the government on the day they said they would, so it got delayed by another 3 days at least.

This story does have an ending, though. One that I’m sure you have already guessed. I did get my money eventually, and I have since fought my way through another semester and come out victorious. Let this be a warning to anyone reading, who are currently in or have plans to attend a college. Even if this has never happened to you before, and no matter how confident you are in your ability to follow instructions. Never underestimate the sadists in the financial aid office. Always be on guard, and at the first sign of trouble take action. Every second you waste exponentially increases your pain and suffering.

---