Post trip letdown and frustration

This may be a personal rant if I’ve ever written one. You won’t find much for links here but a post is a post in the end right?

The thing about trips is that its like Christmas in a way. You spend time planning where you are going to go, what you’re going to do and eat and the like. Then the day to fly out arrives and its like waiting for Santa. When your where you planned to be an doing what you planned its like opening every beautifully wrapped gift. Then it starts to come to an end, the pile of things to do is getting smaller and before you know it, the last one’s paper lies discarded on the floor and its time to head home. That’s when the clean up begins, you clean up putting the items you brought or purchased where they now belong on shelves or in scrapbooks. You take down the fancy decorations and start worrying about the “real” world again.

That’s what the last two days have felt like. Like a books to the face “Good morning” reality has been waiting and its run out of patience. For someone not still in college this wake up call might look like a laundry list such as:

• Restart mail and collect from post office
• Catch up on bills
• Take care of chores forgotten by non traveler family members while gone
• Among other things

My list looked like this:

• Financial Aid to see about missing  FAFSA report
• Grad plans
• See about room assignment for next year
• Turn in contract for Summer host job
• Find out about surprise,yet not a surprise, class requirements
• Play catchup AKA: read everything that my classmates have had a month to digest and write a paper on top of that
• Among other things

Because I wouldn’t have known what was being discussed in class on Monday I opted not to go to class and to take care of the list above. The Financial Aid was nothing to worry about. I didn’t do my grad plans yet. I’ll rant about the room assignment thing in a sec. I truned in the contract like it was nothing and found out what i needed to know for the surprise class. Playing catch up got pushed to today and probably didn’t help with today’s drama.

Now what about to day was so bad?

Today would be the frustration part of this posts title ans where the true rant comes in.

Yesterday I had made the appointment to see a person about choosing a room for the next school year. Today I met with this person and heard about the mess falling through the system’s cracks had created. Apparently there was something I was meant to do before going on the Euro Spring trip to say wither or not I would be in my room.  Nothing was said in the meeting about needing to see this office, so I didn’t know anything needed to be done. Oh well, that’s not what’s really bugging me.

What’s bothering me is how there may be no place for me next year to live. I turned in the housing application and paid the prepayment, but missed my sign up dates because I was gone. When I went to this meeting i thought I would be able to get a room and walk out of there with no problems. After all I’m a senior at this school and I had priority points that should have been able to get me in before someone just coming to this school. Not the case.

All the rooms are full. My building now is full. The building with more suite like rooms is full for females and has a waiting list. I wouldn’t mind being on the waiting list, but the rooms are smaller and this building is the most expensive to live in. I could move into a split building on the upper floors. The issue with this building is because the first half of the floors are for Freshmen. I’m 22 and I would rather not spend my last semester dealing with kids still wet behind the ears from high school who haven’t learned that they don’t “rule the school” anymore. This building is now one of the oldest unremodled buildings and will be torn down in a couple of years… to put it nicely, its a bit dumpy. This is one more option open to me and that would be on the new “open boarders” floor in my current building next year.

Well if you get to be in the same building you’re in now, why not do this? If I did this option I would have an international roommate. Don’t get me wrong, it would be cool to room with someone from a different culture than me. However, I have yet to meet someone who has done this that has had a positive experience. Most of those I know have felt the need to tiptoe around their room. As a senior I’d rather not have to worry about what my roommate is doing and work around them so I can study. Senior year is stressful enough as is, no help will be needed in that department.

So why don’t you live off campus?

Sorry, but you  think I haven’t thought of that? The problem there is that I financially can’t pull that off at the moment. I thought about dropping a class so i could work. I thought about taking a year off an going back home to work. Problem with that last idea is that I would then have to pay back my loans on a degree I haven’t completed yet. What a pickle.

I understand the need to be flexible in a time like this but i don’t like being left hanging with my future on the line. A little melodramatic but that’s me. I am confused on two things with this though.

1. If the dorms are all full, where will new students that are transfer, not Freshmen, go?
2. Last year I had gotten a letter saying that I hadn’t signed up for housing? Why didn’t I get one this year?

When I was first thinking about coming to this school I had applied, was accepted and had housing around the same time as this. How was I able to get in if this was going on back then too? And like I said earlier, last year I had gotten a letter notifying me of the situation. could I have fallen that far into a crack in the system that I was off the complete map?

Stress number two: Playing catch up.

I may have brought this one on myself here, but honestly what person would do class work for a class they aren’t going to half a wold away, and they no longer need? I say no longer need because it no longer goes towards my graduation requirements. With that being said, why do I have to read almost the entire text book in a week, worry about a paper and then take a final? Did I mention I have a week to do all of this?

I don’t have an answer for what I’m going to do about the housing just yet, but I’m going to talk to my adviser and figure out how to drop the class I no longer need. Even if it hurts my GPA and I won’t get reimbursed because i’m after the “drop period,” I’m going to drop it if I can.

 

Last thought: If all of this is the waiting reward for going on a trip, why the heck did I go in the first place.

this about sums up today

Gif provided by: https://u.osu.edu/uofye/tag/passion/