kvetch of the day

this afternoon i ran into a student who took one of my classes last term. i was teaching two different courses, one for senior majors and one mid-level course with no prerequisites. this was only the second class she had taken in the discipline and though she was originally registered for the upper-level class, i encouraged her to wait on that one and get into my other class (which fit into her schedule) instead. it didn't make any sense to me for her to take this advanced class first when the other one was more in line with her plan of study. i signed her drop and add slips and we were good to go.

or so i thought.

several weeks later, this student came in to my colleague's office as i was leaving mine. i overheard her say, "she told me to drop her one class and join the other one. it made a lot of problems for me and i lost my scholarship." what?! i felt horrible and hated to think that i might be at fault for jeopardizing a student's financial aid. after class one day, i asked if we could talk for a minute and i brought up the conversation i had overheard--i expressed my distress, but didn't back off of my initial advice, which i felt was sound. the problem seemed to come from our antiquated, paper-based drop/add system. basically, she was dropped from my upper-level course without being added to the mid-level class, subsequently went below full-time enrollment and was declared ineligible for a federal grant. she reiterated what a problem it had been to get her tuition paid.

i was frustrated on her behalf, but was still irked that she seemed to be blaming me (at least in part) for this mix-up. i told her that i'd be happy to call the financial aid office on her behalf and see if something couldn't be done. it seemed crazy for a student to lose her scholarship over a clerical error, the simple fact that someone let her drop one class before she was added to another. 

so i called. and found out that the filing error happened because she had written an incorrect course number on her add slip (her mistake, but one i probably should have caught, though faculty members sign blank drop/add slips all the time), which held it up. i also found out that the college had found supplementary funds to compensate for her lost grant and the outstanding balance she and her family had to pay was only $250. granted, in these times, i'm not saying that $250 is insignificant, but she had more or less led me to believe that thousands of dollars were at stake. 

i was irritated that she had held me responsible and had painted me as the bad guy to my colleague, and maybe to other people, too. and i was a little resentful that i had taken on so much guilt about this. i spoke to her again and indicated that i had learned of some of the details that she had left out--the incorrect course number, the college's efforts to get her money back, etc. she more or less ignored all of this and again emphasized how economically difficult this whole situation was for her and her family. i felt badly about the money, but i decided to be at content with the fact that i had at least done my best to advocate for her (though under false pretenses).

fast forward to today. i'm leaving campus and spot her heading in the same direction. i slow down to say hi...

"hey X. how's it going?" 

"good, thanks."

"how was your break?"

"it was really great..."

wait for it...

"...i went to key west!"