Today’s Gratitude theme is books. I do love a book, and I am very grateful for the knowledge and adventures they contain. This is the smallest and tidiest of my seven bookshelves. Yes, seven. I said I loved books.
And this is a 25 pound bag of flour, because we are on the letter F. I should be able to get my bake on for awhile with this, right?
Now, there have been developments. Yesterday, I got notice that I am now ineligible for financial aid because of the length of time I have been in school. I have amassed a whopping 190 credit hours between the stint in the late 80s and my current program. This would be a pretty drastic financial issue for me, because I use financial aid to finance the household while I got to school full-time and attempt to parent 6 kids in a reasonable manner. If I am truly not going to receive any more financial aid, my plans to graduate next May will be derailed unless I can find a private donor. It is too late to apply for scholarships for the coming academic year, so I would need to go to work full-time and I would only be able to take one class at a time. But I could still graduate in 3 years. Which is way longer than I want to spend at the undergraduate level, but it’s a plan, right?
However, there is still an award for next year, so it is possible that I am only ineligible for financial aid for the summer. And this morning, I have been thinking on that. Looking at things through a different lens if you will. I say I never have time to do the stuff I want to do. So what if I did? What would I do? I have been in school constantly, carrying up to 19 hours a semester since January 11, 2011. I have made one B in that time, and all the rest have been As. Ok, a few A-‘s. I take school seriously, and I work hard at it. BUT, I am behind in everything else.
A summer off would give me time to
- Clean my house
- Develop an eating plan
- Get to know my kids again
- Cook and bake
- Exercise
- Read
- Write
- Stitch
- Craft in 48 ways
- Study things I want to study
- Play
The problem is figuring out how to finance life without financial aid. Living on 750 bucks a month. No new shoes, no new clothes, nothing but toilet paper and soap. But if I can keep the water and lights on… Maybe it’s doable.
But I need to use the time wisely. Plan it out. Because my tendency, when i have “nothing to do” is to do nothing, and that’s not what I want to do with this time.
I am amazed once again at the difference a good night’s sleep makes in my outlook. Yesterday, my mind was spinning as I tried to get a handle on all of this. And today, I am looking at the same circumstance as a possible gift. As long as I get to go back to school in the fall!