Well, I'm at the end of my rope. Seriously. I'm completely exhausted, mentally, physically, and emotionally. I'm really believing this was not the right choice (I know, people will complain that I haven't even actually given it a chance, but I just *know*), and I keep telling myself it's okay, that I should stick the year out to see what happens, maybe it'll get better, blah blah blah.
When I graduated from undergrad, it was a year early which I hadn't really been expecting. I had no job experience, a weird degree that most regular people scoff at (pure mathematics), was having a rough patch relationship-wise, and absolutely couldn't find a job. I'm fairly sure it was a mix of the economy, my lack of job experience, as well as my off-the-wall B.S., but it really freaked me out. So I made the rash, split second decision to apply to grad school because I was terrified of the real world and not being able to find a job.
So I went and jumped through all of the hoops, recommendation letters, statement of purpose, took the GRE, etc etc, and applied to three schools. All in the span of about...six weeks.
Things got better, I was living with my fiance in our wonderful beachfront apartment, and I had the decision to make whether or not to accept an admission offer. I was given a GTA appointment with full tuition waiver and a fair amount of money as a salary , so I accepted it.
But about a week or two after I'd accepted the offer, they revised my funding offer to be a scholarship for the first year, and what seemed like in addition to my GTA appointment. I read it a few times, asked a few family members, and got a green-light, so I said the second offer was fine.
In July, a fee adjustment showed up in my student finance account with the scholarship. It was in the amount that I thought I'd be getting so I went with it.
Then, I come to find out a week later, they'd made a "typo" in my second revised funding offer. I was apparently not a GTA for the first year. But the scholarship and the fee adjustment were still in my account so I figured it was no major issue (plus no one responds to email anyway here).
In the beginning of August, I packed up everything, and moved cross-country. I'm all set up, and all the things that are previously mentioned in the blog start happening. I would get past it, suck it up for at least the semester. But now, some drastic things really need to happen or else staying for the semester isn't even an option (and not completely of my choosing).
I only received a fraction of the money the offer and student finance account said I was owed. When I went searching for answers, almost everyone claims "It's not their job" or "Go talk to so and so." So when I finally get to the last person on my list to talk to, they aren't a hundred percent sure (emailed someone to find out), but they believe the extra money in my account is an error and I should just be happy with the minimal amount I received. Well, the problem then is now, after buying all my textbooks and shelling out $50 for keys and other random expenses that pop up when you're a student, I can't afford my rent.
The real issue is that if the revised secondary funding offer had said what it was actually supposed to (ie...not had a typo), I never would have accepted it in the first place and would've withdrawn my admission. So now I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place because unless the school takes responsibility here, my only options are going to be A) get evicted eventually, B) break my lease if possible, pay the fees and go home, or C) stay in school until I can find a job for the year and then finish out my lease.
So even if things did somehow turn around for the better, or they offered me the money, it still won't fix the damage they've already done. I was toyed around with by my first undergraduate university to know that that damage can never be repaired.
Besides having already dealt that damaging hand, I feel like my advisor is setting me up to fail. He had me enroll in his class, to look at seventy plus rocks which are supposedly fossils, draw, write quite detailed information, etc etc on each one of them. I barely know the vocabulary to keep up with even basic theories in the class, and I can barely pick out the most basic information from the books I'm supposed to be using because they're either so detailed or in abbreviations that I can't possibly figure out because as so many people like to point out, I have "deficiencies" in the field. And the advisor professor man is currently unreachable, as he left to do field work the day the project was assigned and will be back the day it's due.
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