***I submitted my appeal today. By the end of the day my eligibility on my student account read as "Fed Waiver Approved". My account isn't reflecting the actual money that was there previously yet, but I take that change as a very good sign. I'll be going back to Financial Aid again Monday morning to see about finalizing these darn student loans***


Colleges seem to have a way of aging one prematurely.

I was checking my student account at the college I attend over the weekend. I'm bumping up my courseload for the fall, so will be needing to get some Financial Aid via Federal student loans (qualified for a little free state aid, too). I did all the paperwork, got the numbers, and accepted what I needed a couple months ago. So as far as I knew it was set and ready to go. But I know you still have to do... something... with the business office even if you have student loans (never gotten them for myself before, my husband did all his, so I'm unsure of the process), and billing began on July 1st. Well, even though I had received ZERO notification of this, my student loans were showing up as Canceled.

Needless to say, I had a major-league freak out and couldn't do anything about it for 2 days.

Yesterday I was at the Financial Aid office the second they opened to find out what in the blue hell was going on. Long story short, apparently for the educational requirements, withdrawing from a class counts the same as failing it. So even though I have maintained an honors-level GPA through 59 credit hours, because I had 2 semesters where I had to withdraw from all classes, I have too many credit hours that were attempted but not passed.

Why did I have to withdraw? Well, one semester was because my mother passed away, and the other was when I was first diagnosed with macular degeneration and was at the retinal specialist roughly every 2-4 weeks and would have flunked out due to missing too many classes (this treatment actually went on for 2 years, but I didn't even register for classes during that time).

Luckily, I can file an appeal with the college which goes to committee. Pretty much have to submit a form explaining myself along with documentationB to back up my claims. So I'm having my medical records copied, trying to track down a copy of either my mother's death certificate or obituary (which is not a particularly uplifting project...), and I also asked one of my professors to write up a letter of recommendation to submit as well. Basically for proof that as currently as this past semester, I work my butt off in class. He was MORE than happy to oblige, and wrote a really nice letter on my behalf.

At this point, I'm cautiously optimistic but... still nervous. I hate having to pull off all this stuff at the last minute and have this up in the air. I'm getting SO much out of working towards this Illustration degree and would be devastated if I couldn't continue with my studies... But I'm more than willing to fight tooth and nail to stay.