Tuesday, October 2, 2012

Why I am Not In College (as easy as I can describe)

The real reason I don’t have my degree is the case manager for the Department of Vocational Rehabilitation (DVR).  The first one I had was excellent and saw me through some tough stuff but he was replaced by a woman who didn’t really want to work with me.
 
She, at first, came off as nice but stopped wanting to pay for things that were covered before.  I checked into any DVR policy changes and none existed where she said they did, even contacting my old case manager to make sure.  (She refused to pay for me to go to campus to make-up two of my finals after agreeing and I failed the classes as a result.)
 
She then told me it wasn’t practical to keep attending the community college I was going to but I could check out other options.  The only other real option for me was to try for the technical school as close to home as I could get so I researched and found something I wouldn’t hate learning about and started talking to her about it.  Well, during this, she became less and less responsive to me and would go months without any contact at all; I would contact her daily at some points, hoping she’d get back to me.  It was a bunch of noncommittal attitude and unresponsiveness.

When I got married, I wrote and told her.  She got back to me and said it was OK if I didn’t want to pursue my degree at that point.  Uh, what?  I didn’t say ANYTHING, at any point, about not wanting it.  I think she was confusing my work ethic with hers.  I tried everything I could think of, but nothing worked.  Eventually, I had no recourse but to close out my dream and came very close to ending my life because of it.  I was depressed for a year.

Now you know.
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Quick notes:

*I did try online classes at one point early in my college life but they stopped working for me on my computer (it could have been the dial-up connection).  I failed them and only got funding back when I decided taking all classes at the campus was the best course of action.
When I did take all classes on campus, I made excellent grades.

**I tried contacting my case manager’s superior with results very much like dealing with my case manager directly, nothing.

***College was the only way I could see of ever getting off of public entitlement programs (which I hate being on) and could see no future without it.  I’m still not sure what dream is reachable now and wouldn’t have any real goals at all if it weren’t for my writing.

****This woman also closed out my best friend’s (we’ll call her S.) case without even speaking to S. about it or notifying her before it was done.  This woman was in much more frequent contact with S. than she ever was with me but it didn’t help anything.

1 comment:

  1. Oh man. I do not like that woman. I am so sorry you had to go through that! :(

    ReplyDelete