My car, the elephant
Right now it seems as if I’m at a crossroads. I have to make some serious decisions about my life and where I’m going, and I hate making decisions. I agonize over them until I begrudgingly pick a choice or a choice picks me. The only thing keeping me sane right now is crafts. I was so stressed out when I made my journal but cutting all of the little squares and gluing everything into place soothed me. Today in my Crafts class we started paper mache, and I was able to relax. Even the sunweaving we’ve been doing — believe me when I say I hated it — is soothing to me now. I guess it’s because the busier I keep my hands and mind at once, the less I have to think about the choices I need to make.
I’ve pretty much made my biggest decision, and I don’t like it.
This semester is my last for my Associates degree. I was planning on transferring to a university forty-five minutes away from my house so I could get my Bachelors degree. My car decided it was on a mission to thwart my plans, and so it came down to this: get a better car, or go to SCSU. The thing was, there was no way I could go to SCSU without a better and more reliable car. I decided to ignore it for a while, and put in applications to my current school and SCSU to graduate and transfer. Well, the elephant — AKA my car — didn’t go away. Things with it are getting gradually worse and it’s become apparent that I can’t just hope it survives long enough for me to go to SCSU for at least one semester.
I also have a money problem. I’ve been going to NVCC — my current school — for five semesters, and each semester has cost me nothing because of financial aid (FAFSA). Without that financial aid I wouldn’t be going to college. Since I’d already applied for FAFSA for NVCC for the Fall 2008/Spring 2009 school year, I won’t be able to apply for FAFSA for SCSU until the next school year. The good news is, I get a refund of the FAFSA in the spring. The bad news is it won’t help me pay for any classes/tuition at SCSU until later. I don’t know where I would come up with the money. I thought about getting a full time job, but I’d have to go to school part time and then it would take me longer to finish.
My aunt suggested I take next semester off and work full-time. I could save up for a better car and maybe even get my own place. I could save enough money to fall back on in case I don’t get the FAFSA in the future. Ideally, it would work. The problem is, I don’t know if I can get a full-time job. I’m not sure if my current job will let me go to full-time temporarily, and if they don’t I’m not sure I’ll be able to find something else. I’m also wary of taking any sort of time off because I don’t want to end up not going back to school. I know myself; I am a procrastinator by nature. If I don’t do it NOW, I might never do it.
So here is my solution, if all goes well: I am going to ask at work about going temporarily full-time. I will work full-time from December to August. I’ll get a better car and save some money. I’ll take a couple night classes at SCSU to get started, but only a couple so that I can definitely afford them. In the fall, I’ll go back to working part-time and start school again full-time. Basically, it all relies on whether or not my job will pull those strings for me. Otherwise, I’m gonna have to find another full-time job and I doubt they would let me go down to part-time once I’ve started full-time. Yikes.
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Tags: car problems, frustration, money problems, school, stress
November 17th, 2008 at 11:34 pm
Oh wow, that is a lot going on at one time. Everything will work out though and it will all fall into place. I hope that your job lets you go to full time and that you don’t have to go looking for another job. I know how hard it is to find another job. But it sounds like you have a really good plan and I’m sure it will all work out. *Hugs*
November 18th, 2008 at 4:38 pm
@Jenna: I hope so. Unfortunately it doesn’t look like I can go FT at my job, so if they can’t give me more hours (like, 30/wk), I’m gonna have to find a second job. Sigh.
Thanks for the hugs. (:
November 19th, 2008 at 11:48 am
[...] a Catch 22, just like my own financial situation. I ranted a little about this on Scars Can Speak (the Letters of Love blog), and I’ve been writing in my own [...]