I’m not even talking about tuition for classes.  I’m talking about paperwork.  A bit of background:
I’m a graduate of a full-fledged state university with a bachelor’s degree and everything. I’ve taken AP classes for class overrides, did kickass on the ACT, got good grades, the works.  I’ve been thinking pretty much since I left that I would go back to school to get another degree.  I love to learn, and think that I do well in a classroom.  This time, however, I decided to go with a community college (though it says that it is transitioning), in order to save money and have a bit more flexible of a schedule.  I like to think that I’m a responsible person at times.  I’m going back to study something that will probably be of use in my future (not that I don’t think I’ll ever make use of my language and archaeology degree – Indiana Jones life awaits!)  I’m taking classes at night when possible to avoid interfering with work hours, and I chose the local college to save on money for an AS before transitioning back to the state university.  I’m already saving, so that I can avoid taking out any loans, and keep myself debt-free throughout.  No free rides here!

Anyway, this school has a matriculation program with the state college, where if you get a degree here, you are guaranteed placement there.  The two are like best of buddies, where the state college accepts all credits here, and applies test scores here to there.  I thought it’d be a breeze to go “I already have a higher degree from your big brother college than I plan to get here, let’s get started!”  This was not the case.

I am prefacing this entire rant on the fact that I already have a degree from the other college.  That should be proof enough for pretty much everything here.

First, financial, since this one is shorter.  Go to do all of the paperwork, no biggie.  I don’t live with my parents, but until 24 I’m still their dependent for taxes, so it took a bit longer to get their info, and I am getting no free money since they combined certainly make more than I do.  I then went to get some paperwork filled out, had to go back to bring another form to prove that I’m a citizen.  Decided to bring my birth certificate, but of course a US Certificate of Birth Abroad isn’t enough, so I have to get some parental info.  Get a form from the financial aid person, fill it out, call my mom up to get her drivers license info, wait about a half hour on that while on the phone with her, finish filling it out, take it back.

“We can’t accept this sir, she has to sign it”

“I have her on the phone, will that work?  They don’t live near here. (and the office closes in 30 minutes)”

Nope, no good, gotta get it signed.  Go away, forge her signature come back and make sure I go to a different person, get it taken care of, but wait, DL number is wrong.  Should have guessed that, seeing as she repeated it to me over the phone three times differently.  Call back, another convo, finally get it right, get the form in.  Drive off finally heading home, and wait, I get a call back from the financial aid officer to be informed that I need to supply more info.  Could have been told in person, but I’m already near home, so I’ll stop in the next morning before work.  Finally get that taken care of after three trips.

Next up, academics.  I have a bachelors from an accredited university, and I’m going for an associates.  Felt that was worth repeating.  First had to pay for transcripts to be sent, no biggie, they went pretty fast, and I could order online and have them shipped for free that long five mile distance.  Next I needed to prove standardized test scores.  Like I said, I got a pretty good score on the ACT, but that’s not the issue, the issue is that I needed to take one of those tests to get into the other college, now I need them again, even though to get that degree before… that should be proof enough that I passed them.  Turns out I also need AP test scores, since I used some to override elementary courses, and to override them here for this associates degree (one of which I already earned with similar requirements), I need to supply them again.  I’m not paying to take classes that I don’t need to waste time or money on, so I figure I’ll go looking for them.  My home copies don’t work; I need official AP test scores sent to the school.  When I go to the site, I find that if they are older than four years, they remove them from the computer, because computer space is expensive and precious, but they keep cheap paper archives that take up zero storage space.  To get them instead of emailing or doing an online form, I need to print a form, fill it out with info that I’d have long forgotten due to how long ago they were, fax it to them, and wait for more paper to be pulled and copied and mailed out.  I also need to pay a $15 additional fee per test for the trouble.

So here I am, with a printed out form looking through a box of old papers for my AP paperwork, to request test scores from years ago via fax from a system that is also in paper.  I believe that this should be unnecessary, as my apparently worthless degree should be able to prove these requirements, but since I’ve already sunk some money in, I’ll just keep going.

As a side note, this complaint doesn’t even get started with the overrides for other basic classes that I need, which I may cover later.  Maybe I’ll eventually get started on school again, but I guess I won’t know until I’m in a seat.

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