not in canada

people keep asking me when i'm moving.

i'm not.

yet.

in november i got a pleasant email from the enrollment people at UBC to inform me that i had to drop the online class i was registered for to be eligible for federal financial aid. 

unfortunately, the class was a mandatory prerequisite for every single other class in the entire program. 

i emailed the program coordinator about the problem and she was as baffled as i was. there are several american students in the program who receive federal financial aid and they had all taken the class. 

several phone calls and emails later and the mystery was solved.

in november the u.s. department of education issued a new rule (or cracked down on the implementation of an existing rule - who knows?) which stated that american students at foreign universities were ineligible for federal financial aid if their program included any distance/online components. 

and just like that - my plans went down the drain.

don't even get me started on the incomprehensible idiocy of this edict. what possible purpose can it serve? 

the rule affected 26 people in my program. i'm lucky because i found out before i got there - students already in the program were informed that they would not be receiving their second disbursements of the year and had to find different sources of financial aid. 

after talking to the  program coordinator i decided to defer until fall 2015 while they tried to see if they could work out a solution, but in the meantime i would re-apply to other schools.

and so here i am.

still in fresno.

***

i got an email from the program coordinator last week saying they had worked out the problem, and people were receiving their funding. i'm still reapplying to one other school as a back-up plan, but it looks like i'll be headed up to vancouver in the fall. 

keep your fingers crossed for me - and if you happen to drive past a u.s. department of education building, please, throw an egg at it for me.