Worn, crisis averted, more waiting on the dominoes.

After deciding to apply for more loan funds through the Smart Option Student Loan Plan as a contingency against the move costs, car insurance and unplanned post-move expenses, I checked on the status of the Stafford and Graduate PLUS loans that I'd applied for back in early May.  Imagine my shock when they were no longer showing up on the website, so I called Sallie Mae to see what was up.  And what a what's up it was.

Turns out my school decided that with the changes that the Department of Ed put through, that they were no longer accepting Stafford and Graduate PLUS loans that I was told to apply for weeks earlier, and that the school had canceled those loan applications on July 2nd.

Without telling me.


For several hours I was mad enough to launch a nuclear warhead - just when the fuck were they going to tell me, when I'm utterly dependent on the loans to pull this off?  I've been on the other side where applications (or, in this case, needed communications) just fall through the cracks, so it was also a reminder of how utterly overloaded I was at my previous job where there just weren't enough staff to handle it all.  A staff member at the school let me know that the person who was nominally in charge has been away from the office for multiple stretches this year - saying in not so many words that there have been problems and likely not feeling great about the turn of events.

I was very lucky, then, to feel that the large sum of money initially applied for, when broken down further, seemed uncomfortably thin, and that I should try to secure that cushion, spendy though it was.  Had I not done so, it probably wouldn't have been until early August when the Consulate wouldn't have been able to verify my source of funds, since I sent them now-canceled "credit-approved" loan applications.  I went to Kinko's and spent more money than needed to full out a new SOSLP application for the whole nine yards, then print out the pages that I'll fax to the Consulate to supersede the original submission.  Jen mentioned that this kind of b.s. is to be expected from Sallie Mae, and the guy on the phone just repeated his spiel calmly after I said "fuck" while exhaling.  (Wasn't so calm with my message to the covering staff member at school, which though obscenity-free still resulted in some remorse, having been on the receiving end of countless calls like that in my professional career for something that landed in my lap that now became my problem to solve.)

I found all of this out today only twenty minutes before I met with the first of three moving company reps, whose estimates ranged from much less than expected ($2900) to about what I expected ($4200) but using markedly different weight counts.  It's too much material to read and it's going to have to wait until tomorrow or Wednesday to decipher and digest, but it'll also come with some furniture upgrades to be acquired to pitch some of our junky/creaky/somewhat unstable items such as a sectional couch with a hideaway bed, a better computer desk to replace the particle board, and a bedside bookcase to replace the crummy Leaning-Tower one I have that was an Ikea cheapie and crumbled during some home maintenance.  Paradoxically, I feel calmer about the financial aid snafu with new stuff on the mind - it's something I have some control over, unlike the visa decision, the financial aid (re-)decision and disbursement, and the eventual arrival of our stuff in Toronto that will be preceded by our sleeping on a yet-to-be-acquired air mattress.

Will be on the prowl for no-payments-until-X with my good U.S. credit, but until then, it's time to collapse into bed to begin my abbreviated, second-to-last workweek for some time.