FAFSA

FAFSA is the most beneficial aspect of college. Young chirrens like myself whose parents aren’t wealthy enough to pay for school out of pocket depend on federal aid to get us through the best four, five, or twenty years of school. Where would we middle class chirrens be without federal funding!?

In any event, usually in January I do my FAFSA. But lately, I’ve been taking the Howard Administration CPT approach. I’ve been doing it in parts, taking my time, setting it aside doing things that are less important, and doing it way when it’s convenient for me. So Saturday I log on to Howard’s website for no apparent reason, boredom clearly, and I see there’s a bulletin posted that FAFSAs are due by February 15^th. Now last time I checked, FAFSA forms are due until mid-June. Why is Howard trying to get slick and rush people into getting their FAFSAs in early when they know full well they won’t have them processed in time for the next school year? Last year, I did my FAFSA literally on January 2, 2009 for the Fall/Spring school year. So Fall comes around, tell me why I didn’t even get my aid dispersed until late October? No sir. Timex would not approve of such a wait.

Being that two of my friends are white collar con-artists by nature, I tried to find a loop hole so that I could file independent and get more money for school. But apparently they’ve already beat me to the punch. Then they tried to get smart with me:

See, if you try to lie, they catch you. The option basically says “Look child, we don’t have time for your foolishness and crime”. So naturally I picked the second option, and it led me to this page:

Now basically FAFSA gives you another chance to come clean. Basically the first option is saying, “Mmhmm, lying tramp, put your parent’s information on the FAFSA. Up there tryna lie”. At this point I had no choice but to put my parent’s information on the form. I was so unhappy because I need to file independent so I can get more money. Perhaps I could marry a foreign woman within the next handful of hours so that I can file independent…and then divorce her. Mrs. FAFSA put me right in my place, and I did not appreciate it.

Money, money, money, money…MONEY! With FAFSA many students are lucky enough to have more than enough money for school and get refund checks. Luckily, I was one of those students [does the tootsie roll]. Unlike many of the Howard students, I didn’t run over to Friendship Heights buying things I couldn’t afford on a normal basis. As always, I took my father’s advice to “take care of your business first, and then have fun”. I went down to the bookstore to buy my books once I got my refund check. I went upstairs to the second level looking for my criminal justice book. When I noticed that the book was $115 I did a

 

Followed by a

And finished it with a

I was not paying $100+ for a book. Then I went over and looked for my French book only for it to not be there as well. At which point, I was already a little uneasy about the events that had just transpired, so I just left. I got online and looked for my books and I found a few of them and ordered them. I’m sure they were much cheaper than the bookstore prices…as if that isn’t a surprise. I also took the time to head over to Ebay and bought some more Janet and Michael posters. So I did some research and learned that the 5th edition of the criminal justice book was word for word the same as the 6th edition and was only $30. In any event, the point of this whole thing is to know how to learn how to work your money to the best of your ability. Take care of what you need to take fare of first, and then have fun. Remember, work then play.

So lately the weather has been confusing DC with another place with all this snow we’ve been getting. A few days before the snow hit, I decided to head over to Safeways [yes that extra “S” is just to piss off certain people] to restock on food. And as always, I go in there getting a whole bunch of stuff I didn’t go in there for. It usually starts off with “ooh these are 2 for $5”. Then it becomes “well it’s only $3 that’s not much”. Finally it becomes “Ooh these are finally on sale, let me get these now”. And by the time I actually get around to what I went into the store, I’m like “oh heck naw, not for no $3.49. They done lost they mind”…followed by looks of disgust and confusion at the price of what I went into the store for. SMH. So it was around 7:30 when I went over to the meat section at the back of the store. After getting my meats, I decided to get in line. Little did I know once I turned around I was already in line. Yes kids, the lines were THAT long. Maybe I came at a bad time. Maybe people had just gotten paid and were shopping. Maybe it was December 24, 2012. Who knows? But get this. I put my basket down, walked from 18^th street to 14^th street to Target to look for something, walked back to the Safeway, only to realize the same people that were in line were STILL in line. And I’m like, what the…? So I just took the L and waited in line endlessly for the self-checkout. Took me quite some time, but I did it. And I’m STILL upset about DC government implementing this new law about charging a nickel for each plastic bag used. Supposedly it’s to clean up the Patomac River. We all know that’s BS. The Patomac has been dirty, and it will forever be dirty.

In the past week and some change, DC has gotten about 4 feet of snow. I remember waking up, looking out the window, and it looked like east Finland. It was just an unnecessary amount of snow. Now I wasn’t complaining when I realize classes had been canceled for the day. In addition to that, classes for me were canceled for an entire week, not to mention not having class the following monday. What more could a person ask for? So naturally my inner child just HAD to go play in the snow. The snow forced us to walk in the middle of the street because walking on the sidewalk was out of the question. So me and my friend walked in the center of Georgia ave for about 5 blocks without a car in sight. Indeed, Georgia Ave was DEAD on a saturday at 8:30 in the evening. I went out with a few friends to a friend of a friend’s place. Along the way, I couldn’t resist stage diving into mounds of snow. Yes kids, I had the time of my life. Don’t judge me. Of course I had to take pictures:

And believe it or not, there’s two cars buried under all that snow in the second picture. I was out around 3 am. I had to walk over 7-11 because I need another two liter of ginger ale, on top of the fact that I wanted an ice cream sandwich. Again, don’t judge me. I can’t stress that enough.

My life at Howard University.