Yeeah! Let's hit the caf on the way to the kegger!

I'm a student.

Today I registered for my first semester at Truman College, a community college down the street from my house. The plan is that I will spend my spring catching up on prerequisites, then begin their nursing program in either the summer or fall. Eventually I will be an RN, which will mean that I will have a dependable source of income working weird hours (which I love), complete with health insurance and a way to go on Saving The World Whilst Making a Living.

I probably should have foreseen that registration would be a clusterfuck, but since I didn't go to Truman today planning to register for anything I really don't fault myself for arriving a little bit unprepared. I went to Truman today simply planning to sit down in a calm small room and have a generous, thoughtful admissions counselor look over my college transcripts and say, "Advanced Mask? What fun! That should cover Organic Chemistry!"

One thing did surprise me. I pretty much feel like I robbed a bank because Truman agreed to accept my freshman year statistics class from Drew to cover their math requirement. Now, I know that technically statistics IS math, but not the way I did it. I barely squeaked by with a C- in that class, and I had to almost murder myself to pull that off. What's more, it was 1998. Bio and Chem have a 5-year shelf life when it comes to transfer credits counting for anything, but diamonds -- and apparently terrifying freshman gen-ed math classes -- are forever. Sigh. Of. Relief.

(Does anyone know if I can bypass Chem 201 because I said "Shelf Life" on my blog?)

And they waived Composition 101 because I have a BFA with a lit minor. Rock.

So spring. Spring spring spring. I feel lucky because I live in a frozen tundraland where classes, over May 16th, will not likely intersect any spring-type weather. I won't have to feel robbed, as I did in Texas, to have to sit inside or meet my obligations while everyone else is dashing around playing softball and frisbee in balmy breezy paradise outside my window. Nope, here in Chicago there'll still be snow on the ground when I have finals for spring semester, and for this I'm glad. I will spend the long prairie winter sequestered over my textbooks, scooping steaming soup from my newish Crock Pot (thanks Keel!), making pots of coffee, pulling All Nighters that start at 3pm when the sun sets.

Registration, it turns out, is a series of tables with flags proclaiming, "Station 1!" "Station 2!" that are arranged in somewhat logical order, but Station 6! is a lonely-looking man whose job it is to tell people they should have filled out the FAFSA already and if they don't pay their tuition in full right now the classes they've already registered for will "disappear." He does this with a knowing smirk, weighing on his long Beelzebub hands the invisible scales of justice. When I asked him what would happen if I filled out the FAFSA right now and then applied my federal aid to the classes I'd already registered for, his smirk-lines deepened and he leaned forward on his chair, templing his creepy hands beneath his chin. "If your federal aid is approved, which it may or may not be, you won't know it for a week or more. By that time your registration will have been eradicated and you'll have to take your chances finding the same class sections again. That probably won't be possible because those sections will fill up fast. Mwah hah."

The "mwah hah" was what got me, and before long I had shrieked, "Who are you, Vincent Price?"

The financial aid guy had a laughing fit, I set up a payment plan, and am currently filing my online FAFSA and researching People Who Want to Give Money To People Like Me. There aren't many. And I just heard a sound that I'm pretty sure is the economy's death rattle. Or my radiators turning on. At least my heat is paid for.

But yay nonetheless! College!