Financial aid is quite the “clusterfuck” as my former boss mentioned the quoted term.

A while back, I had a personal set-back and a medical condition that ended up being the one-two punch that basically had me dropping out of college while on a federal Pell grant. Let’s just say the Feds were awful quick to scream “ZERO!!!!! WE WANT OUR MONEY YOU ASSHOLE!!!!!” in a proverbial sense and they were aggressive as hell (like calling the day the semester ended). Once I paid them back… They conveniently kept a record on their files saying “Zero has paid his dues in full” however, the forgot to put it on my FAFSA file saying the same apparently all summer… I had contacted them about this flag since February, with various agents going “It takes time for the computer to flag an account as paid.”

Chain reaction: My school basically found that same flag and said “Zero, we can’t offer you any financial assistance cause your file is flagged as you have not paid the Feds their due cash.”

Cue this morning: I call the Feds up this morning and met with a amicable agent on the phone. Got hit with the standard gauntlet of questions to verify my identity of Zero, so after that I fire off my query of “Is there a way I could get my status immediately send over to my school for verification purposes and have my file cleared?” Sadly, I got the standard “It takes up to 2 business days for us to fax that to your educational establishment…” line from them.

That’s actually a bit ironic as when you ever owe the feds cash, they will hunt you down like a pack of bloodthirsty rottweilers. On the converse, when you pay them off… They just silently clear your file and set you free, while not updating anything else vital. That is almost a tactic that the nefarious credit companies would pull to try playing the game of “Oh… you still haven’t paid up” and conveniently putting off to the side you’ve paid in full.

Ugh… I hope the document updating my status shoots over sooner than “two business days”. We live in an era where electronic facsimilies are possible, it should not be that hard to pull up my file, drop in my financial aid office’s fax number, and then say “Send to this number.” I think I am going to be feverishly worried for a good while until my school goes “You’ve been verified and here is your financial assistance eligibility…”