Pins and Needles

My head's been in my ass more often than usual lately... when I start to worry about the future, that kind of thing tends to happen.

What was bugging me wasn't much, just the whole finishing school thing, no biggie, right? Problem is, I really want to finish - I've got an awful lot invested in this. And it's not just me - our whole family is invested in this joint education venture - we've worked hard to get as far as we have, we've done without things, we've gone deep deeeeep into debt, we've lived what has felt like a precarious existence for the last three years to get as far as we have.

And we're close enough now to taste it - I can actually imagine the dissertation (which is something that I haven't been able to do before) and D is entering the home stretch - he's written qualifying exams, he's completed all his course work, he's done most of the practical qualifications he needs to graduate, and will be there in less than a year.

So when I found out that my loan application had been declined, what I felt I can't quite describe - disbelief, fear, desperation, despair, anxiety - or something that was a bit of all of them, and it preoccupied my thoughts for much of the past few weeks. People who I met often said I looked tired, but I think it was just that I was worn out with trying to figure out what was wrong.

Because there was no good reason that I could see for the decision. My credit rating looks exactly the same as it did last year when I applied for the same loan (which I got), so it couldn't be that. I checked my credit record, but there was no incorrect information on there that would've affected it. It took several days to track down the information I needed to find out what was wrong, all the time, I tried not to imagine what we'd have to do if I didn't sort this out.

You know what was wrong?

When my school emailed the confirmation of enrollment to the lender, they neglected to actually fill out the form and sent it out blank. So the lender thought that meant I wasn't registered and rejected the application. But the kicker was that it took over a week to get anyone to tell me why the loan was rejected, and then another three days, four phone calls, and a personal visit to the person in charge to get them to understand that this needed to be fixed.

Now I'm sitting here with my fingers crossed, hoping that nothing else goes wrong before they get the money to me...