I've been in lurker mode for a while now, but I've read many of the trials and travails of my fellow kossacks, and now in this hour of crushing spirt-trodding defeat, I bring my very own story to you. A story of having one's dreams pounded into a slimy paste under the heel of an uncaring bureaucracy... in this case, higher education...
I jovially came home from work today, looking forward to spending my first full married weekend with my husband-of-six-days. He normally greets me at the door (he's finishing his dissertation from home right now). When I stepped inside today, he gave me a forced smile and whimpered, "We need to talk."
"Oh?" At this point I was thinking all manner of horrible things. You see, my husband (it's still hard to call him that, due to the novelty of it) is the most Type-B person in the world. I'm an always-worried Type A... if there's nothing readily apparent that I ought to be worrying about, I find that worrying.
With great effort, he continued, "I didn't get paid today."
"So?" The university where we both did our graduate work is notorious for screwing things up. They went an entire semester without paying him his research stipend once because, "Oops, paperwork error." He almost starved to death and went without electricity for six months due to their "oops, paperwork error." Screwups are par for the course for them.
"Actually, I'm not getting paid anymore. And I might not be getting my PhD now. They said my tuition hasn't been paid over the past six years, and that if I ever want to graduate, I owe then $25,000."
Therein lies the crushing blow. I was a grad student not too long ago... I worked for two years, 12 hour days, 7 days a week, doing research, teaching classes... ungodly hours for the sake of my degree. And now here he is being told that after six years of that at a top-25 university, months from graduating, so close to receiving his degree that you could pretty much fucking smell the paper the degree was written on. And now, all that hard work now obliterated by "Ooops, paperwork error."
Two years ago the registrar contacted him and told him there were some registration problems to clear up, he jumped through their paperwork hoops, and was told it was the end of the story. And they let him register for the past two years too. And the preceeding four as well, actually. This is the same university that withheld my grades once and wouldn't let me register because I has $6.00 in late fees from the library system. Neither of us can believe that six years later they can just say, "Ooops, paperwork error." This evening when he told me this, I made him log on to their computer system. His grades are all there, up to the present. I made him save a copy of that webpage... just in case those records "disappear" as they continue to hold the past six years of his life hostage.
The $25,000 in question was money that was supposed to be paid out by his department in the form of grants and fellowships. He was recruited by the university under a handsome fellowship (which, oops, they didn't mention would decline to only 43% of its first year value in year 2 and year 3). He attended graduate school, like many in the sciences and engineering fields (including myself), under the agreement that his tuition would be paid for and he would be provided with a stipend for conducting teaching and research. Up until today (with the exception of the one semester, which he was eventually given backpay for), he was receiving a stipend. He was registered for classes (this is actually the supposed root of the problem... they say he wasn't actually registered). He took classes, conducted research, taught classes, and otherwise worked his ass off. But all along, supposedly they were never paying his tuition. And his department says they can't do anything about it now because that money was supposed to come out of grants all those years... grants which are now spent up and now ooops.... no more money to fix their fuckup.
I am heartbroken right now. The husband is seeming to be taking it well at the moment, but likely that's partly the numb shock still in effect. This isn't a huge financial setback at the moment, despite losing almost a 1/3 of our income right now, because we have been trying to live well below our means and start building savings. But this hurts on a level I can't even begin to describe.
We're going to try to fight this, but we don't even know how to start. I just needed to get this off my chest. With all my chronic illnesses, we've been through much worse together and will undoubtedly go through more in the future. In the grand scheme of things, I suppose it's not that big a deal. But right now, this really hurts. If any of you have any words of encouragement, or similar stories of completely getting screwed over and how you overcame them (or beat your head bloody against a wall trying too), I'd very much like to hear them.
Thanks for the open ear (or, er, eyes).