I have recently discovered that my body can safely process a McDonald’s french fry but considers lettuce an assassination attempt, and I think this explains more about my life than years of therapy ever could.
This is not an exaggeration. I can roll through a drive-thru, consume a medium fry containing enough sodium to preserve a Victorian child, and my digestive system calmly clocks in for its shift. But if I open one of those responsible little bags of salad and feed myself some leaves like a woman who has a 401(k) and actually opens her mail, within hours my stomach is making noises usually associated with deep-sea exploration.
This feels particularly insulting because I have spent the last few years doing all the things you’re supposed to do when you decide to get your shit together. I got healthier. I lost a bunch of weight. I started taking better care of myself. And somewhere along the way my gastrointestinal tract apparently decided that vegetables are now a controlled substance.
The lesson here appears to be that whenever I make a responsible decision intended to improve my life, there will be consequences.
Which brings me to college.
I went back to school this semester after approximately 25 years away, and because I am a grown woman with two children, a job, bills, and absolutely no financial margin for a surprise side quest, I did not just enroll and hope for the best. I met with a counselor specifically to make sure I had dotted every i and crossed every t. I filled out the FAFSA. I made an educational plan. I received a financial aid award. I rearranged my work schedule around school because the entire point of financial aid was to make it possible for me to work fewer hours while I was sitting in a classroom.
I essentially walked into Cuesta and said, “Hello. I haven’t done this since Operation Iraqi Freedom. Please identify any rakes in the grass before I step on them.”
Needles to say, they missed a few. Now I’m missing an eye.
The first adventure began when Cuesta changed my name in its system. This somehow locked me out of my account for months. Nobody could figure out why. I spent an astonishing amount of time trying to convince various people that I was, in fact, me, while the computer apparently believed Sandee Hunt and Sandee Hubbell were two separate women engaged in an elaborate scheme to attend community college.
While everyone tried to figure that out, I missed my priority registration and couldn’t log into a single system for the entire summer.
Eventually I regained access, but the underlying identity problem apparently achieved immortality. Months later, my Cuesta ID is still associated with two different student records. This becomes particularly funny when I physically go to campus seeking help and cannot reliably check into the electronic queue to receive that help, because the system doesn’t know which version of me is standing there.
There are apparently two of me enrolled at Cuesta, and somehow neither one can get Financial Aid to call her back.
Then, shortly before classes started, I learned my financial aid had been suspended because of my academic record from 25 years ago. This was fascinating information considering I had specifically met with a counselor beforehand and asked whether everything was in order.
Multiple counselors have now told me some version of, “We’re sorry. Nobody would have known this was going to get flagged. We didn’t know.” And I actually believe them. People make mistakes, systems are complicated, and apparently my 25-year-old academic record contained a financial-aid booby trap nobody saw coming. But there is a point where “Whoops, nobody knew” stops being a charming explanation when the consequence is that I might not be able to buy groceries.
There has also been a lot of discussion about changes to federal student-aid rules under the Trump administration and how confusing everything has become. And sure, federal financial-aid rules really did change this year. I am perfectly willing to believe that Donald Trump has made somebody’s paperwork more complicated. But Donald Trump was not sitting across the desk from me when I specifically asked whether I had everything in order. Donald Trump did not look through my records and tell me everything was fine. Donald Trump did not give me a financial-aid award and a disbursement calendar showing me when I could expect money, which I then relied upon when deciding how many hours I could afford to take away from work.
And Donald Trump is not currently sitting on my SAP appeal.
That decision happens at the school. Federal rules may have created the circumstances that got us here, but at some point we have to stop pointing 3,000 miles east and deal with the paperwork sitting right here in San Luis Obispo. Orange FuckFace can only take so much of the heat here, folks.
So I did what responsible adults allegedly do when confronted with a bureaucratic nightmare: I followed the instructions. I worked with my counselor, completed the required paperwork, and submitted my SAP appeal on August 9. Cuesta’s own published policy says students can expect a decision on a complete appeal within 45 days.
More than 50 days later, my counselor confirmed that Financial Aid still had not processed mine.
I called. No callback. I tried to schedule an appointment. No appointments. I tried going in person, which brings us back to the fascinating philosophical question of which Sandee Hunt the computer would like me to be today. The truly surreal part is that nearly everyone I’ve dealt with has been lovely. They look at what has happened and tell me it’s weird. They tell me this isn’t normal. They apologize. At this point I have accumulated enough sincere apologies from Cuesta College that I should be able to redeem them for a tote bag.
Unfortunately, PG&E does not accept apologies as a form of payment for my electrical bill. Neither does my landlord. Neither does the grocery store. Unfortunately, these damn kids remain stubbornly committed to eating food every day.
I can understand the original mistake. What I cannot understand is discovering the mistake, watching the student immediately do everything required to fix it, letting her continue sacrificing working hours to attend classes, and then leaving the appeal untouched for more than 50 days while she gets progressively closer to not being able to feed her kids. That’s not a Trump administration problem anymore. That’s a Tuesday-at-Cuesta problem.
And this is the part that really makes the whole thing spectacular: I have A’s. Straight frickin’ As, bro!
The actual college part—the thing I was afraid I might not be able to do after 25 years—is going beautifully. I can handle the classes. I can do the work. I can show up as a 42-year-old mother with a job and a life and discover that not only can I still do this, I’m actually really fucking good at it.
What may ultimately drive me out of college is paper-pushing pandemonium.
There is something almost artistically consistent about this. I try to improve my health and discover that McDonald’s is apparently safer than spinach. I try to improve my future by going back to school and discover that I am academically thriving but may have to quit because an appeal has been sitting somewhere gathering dust for months, while everyone apologizes for how weird that is.
I don’t expect the universe to reward me every time I make a good decision. I don’t need a parade because I ate a vegetable or completed my homework. I would simply like self-improvement to occasionally improve something without unlocking a previously undiscovered administrative or gastrointestinal boss level.
At this point, though, I’m starting to understand the rules: If I really want to protect my health, finances, and future, apparently I need to drop out of college and go live it up with Ronald McDonald.