So I've been at home visiting my mom for Mothers' Day. Happy Mothers' to mothers reading this, and to people reading this who have mothers, "word to your mother!". We BBQ'd and I got to go see some high school buddies while I was in town. My friend Richard who works as a florist whipped me up an awesome M-Day bouquet!

Other than that, I'm having to submit an appeal to the financial aid office. It appears that I've finally gone over the Satisfactory Academic Progress (SAP) limit. For real this time. However, it raises more questions. The finaid office has never been totally competent in my book. They mishandled my study abroad hours in a pretty bad way. That's what threw me over SAP the first time and it was a primary motivating factor when I dropped out of school. I attribute a lost year of my life to that mishap. I had to go back up to the finaid office for months and fight to show them there was a discrepancy there. Even after I was allowed aid again, those 24 hours of ghost credit kept popping up to bite me in the butt. Every semester since, my records have had to be reviewed to show that, no, that credit isn't there and I'm still eligible for aid. This has resulted in me more often than not receiving aid late. It sucks to be taking your midterm and wondering where the heck your school money is. On top of all this, they've been pretty on the spot with mailing me notifications regarding my classes and financial aid, but the notification that stated my classes would be dropped last week if I didn't do something only went to my E-mail, and I only happened to see it by chance. No idea what that was about, but I'm not happy.

Anyways, when I switched to International Studies, my SAP limit (as I understand it) was upped to 207 hours, which I passed this semester. However, looking at my degree plan and the number of attempted hours I had when I restarted, 207 would never have been sufficient in the first place. By my count, I would have needed a limit of 222 hours to complete school. Since I've returned to school, I've made all 'A's and one 'B', and except in one instance where I was mistaken, never strayed from my degree plan. In short I have made school serious business and have frankly been kicking an ass or two at it. Hardly unsatisfactory academic progress if you ask me. I have only the Summer semester between me and graduation. I've written them a letter stating the above, but with less vitriolic language and fewer internet memes thrown in. I hope they'll see things my way and award me aid for this final semester. Wish me luck, folks!