Later that day...

I left for school early this morning because I had something of a complicated question. I still hadn't gotten my student loan paid to my university, much less the check for the spillover. I'm well aware that no business in their right mind would willingly part with money, but these people hadn't gotten paid themselves, so I figured something might be up. My class didn't start until 1 pm, so I tried to get on campus at 8 am, which (much to my surprise) was actually enough time to figure the whole mess out. I even had a half an hour to sit and read before class.

It turned out (after I had been sent across campus and to two different offices) that I wasn't taking enough credit hours through the university to borrow any money at all. The explanation I was given was that "It's too hard to keep track of just one class for a student; you know, if they drop it or withdraw or something."
"Well, how many more credit hours do I need?", I asked.
"Just two." was the nice young lady's reply.
"So, if I take just one more class, that'll fix things?"
"Yes, but you have to finish the class."
"If I register now, when will they cut the check?"
"This afternoon."

... You may think of several reactions I might have had at this point, but by now, I'm sufficiently experienced with the bureaucracy that I just quietly thought to myself, "What two-credit-hour class do I want to take now?" It turned out to be a programming class, which fits nicely into my schedule, is something I find interesting, and had available seats, and for which I was qualified. So I went to register for it, and was turned down because I didn't have some basic algebra class as a prereq.

I have college level calculus on my transcript. It worries me that I couldn't get into the class. So I went to talk to the computer sciences department, which (of course) was on a different campus. So I rode the bus today for the first time in a year or two. It was fun. I found a pen. I got to the CS department, talked to a very nice woman who listened sympathetically, told me she could help me (insert joy-induced heart attack here), and then helped me exactly the way she said she would (insert exploding head due to shock and pleasure here). It turns out that the computer had just interpreted the prereq for the class a little too literally, due (natch) to programmer error, a situation she explained to me, not to avoid fault, but because she thought I might be better off for knowing what was going on. God bless that woman. Her name is Pearl. As soon as I get my spillover, I'm going right out to the grocery store, getting cookie dough, and baking her cookies.

And now I'm a week behind in one of my classes. This is good; I was dangerously close to being in perfect attendance for the first week of school. Hooray! My slackerliness lives!