Okay, so, I'm kind of completely freaking out right now. Let me set up the background. So, at the start of this semester, I got a 1,400 dollar refund from my loans. I checked my Bill information online and it said I didn't owe any money. I lived on campus last year and lived at home this year instead. So I assumed the money that I was refunded was the money that would have gone into housing last year. Since I had no income at the start of the semester, and I had to commute an hour there and back every single day, the money didn't last long just as a result of having to use it on gas. Fast forward to today. I found out I had a hold on my account. I went to go find out why, and it was because... I owe 1400 dollars. That money is gone! I have 400 dollars to my name! The only option I have is to try to get my parents to pay the 1400 dollars. Now, they are already paying for my car and cell phone bill, and that alone is going to have them livid, but it doesn't stop there. If my mom logs onto my account to pay the bill she will discover that one of the classes I'm getting charged for, I had to drop. Even worse, another is an "Introduction to Queer Studies" class. She finds that out, and I could see myself getting kicked out. Then I would have 400 dollars, no phone, no car, no anything. My job now is for my family taking care of my grandma. I don't know what to do. Is it too much to ask for a Christmas break where I'm not terrified of getting kicked out. Its been like exactly a year since my horrible horrible coming out experience, and the closer its got the more I've had a feeling that something awful was about to happen. Well now it is. I literally can't think of a good way out of this situation. Like, its my fault the money's gone. When they find out I took a "liberal class run by the gay agenda," and wasted more money dropping a class I am going to be royally screwed, EC.
Update: So I told my mom about the money. She took it better than expected (granted she was in bed when I told her). I told her I didn't want her to feel like they had to pay it, and was prepared to take a semester off to save money to pay it myself. She said she didn't want me to take a semester off, so she's going to check how much they have in the bank, and I told her if she wants I have to go up anyway so I'll take a check up. I'm going to all efforts to keep her off my university account. If I can keep her from looking at my class schedule for this semester, everything should be fine. I'm going to attempt to see if I can change my password so she can't access. I feel awful taking 1400 dollars from my parents though... as if I was already totally dependent on them...
*hugs snow really tight* Come on! You can pull through this! I know you can...How hard can it be to keep your schedule from your mother? Even better - why don't you create a dummy schedule and replace "Queer Studies" with something else.....I know it's lying and it may not be the best thing to do - not after you're feeling so bad for forcing 1400 out of them...but.... *sigh* I dunno. I'm here if you need me ok?
Have you talked to a financial aid advisor? Something doesn't sound quite right. They deal with probably thousands of accounts, so it's easy enough for stuff to get mixed up and whatnot. I would certainly talk to them and see why it is you owe money.
If that "refund" was in error, you should be able to talk to them about paying it back over the course of several months, or even years. Just go talk to them and explain what happened. Lex
I agree with lex, money paid to you in error cannot be forced out of you immediately it should be a case of paying it over time. Hopefully though it can be solved easily by talking to an adviser! But on the parent front good luck! I really hope it all goes fine! I'm here to talk if you need to!
You'll be fine. When I dropped out 4 years ago my loans refused pmt and I was left with a $4500 hold. I wasn't able to pay it off until this year and am now finally going back to school. Your mother shouldn't have any reason to see your class schedule. If she needs to make pmt just have her call your financial aid department and make payment directly rather than online.
Does your schools online system have some, limited parental access program? That could help you if they did.
They have known for a year that you are gay. Would they really be surprised that you are taking a class in Queer Studies? I mean, clearly, they don't like it. But if they didn't kick you out for being queer, I find it really unlikely that they will kick you out for taking a Queer Studies class. If you've been paying for school with loans, they shouldn't be able to dictate what classes you can and can't take. And frankly, if they know that you're gay, surely they realize that you are probably involved in gay stuff at school. Anyway, I'm going to repeat what others have said, and say to go in to the University and see if they can help you figure it out. If it was their error, they will be willing to work something out. Most likely, there will be some way of working it out anyway. If nothing else, it should be possible to take out an additional loan, with your parents as cosigners--it might have to be paid back faster than standard student loans. But that way, you would still be paying for it yourself. Really, it could even be the case that the debt that is showing NOW is the error, and you don't actually owe anything. You should find out BEFORE you give them any money. Of course, it's also possible that you misunderstood something, and spent money you shouldn't have. But you really should figure out what actually happened, and make sure you completely understand. You definitely don't want this to happen again. Did you take classes over the summer? Sometimes, things get a little screwy if you attend over the summer. And, it may be that some of your financial aid was contingent on your taking a certain number of credits, which you fell below when you dropped the class you dropped. The grants would be contingent, not the loans--but it could reduce your overall financial aid package, so that you would possibly not have had the extra $1400 from the loans, and it would all have gone to tuition and fees. My experience has been that financial money is given in tiers of credit hours, rather than for each credit hour. At my school, 12 credit hours was full time. Below that, they also had aid for 6 or 9 hours. But the classes were almost always 4 credits. So, if you were intending to take 12 credits, but you had to drop a class for some reason, that would put you at 8 credit hours. You would then qualify only for 6 credits worth of aid, and you would have to pay for the other two hours yourself (even if you withdrew from your class early enough that they didn't charge you for it). This has the very stupid effect of making students take totally useless 1 and 2 credit classes, in order to put their hours at the exact right number that financial aid would pay for them all--meaning that the government is therefore paying for a lot of useless classes that often don't even apply toward degree requirements. It may be that money was dispersed to you after you enrolled for your classes, but after you dropped your class you owe money, not just for that class but for some of your other credits as well. It's really messed up. But don't give them any money until you figure out why you owe it. And ask them what your options are to pay them back. Talk to someone in person!
Woah, sorry for straying off topic, but is your avi and your title related to Lemony Snicket's ASOUE?!
Sorry for the late response guys. I've been sick for the last couple of days. I do know why I owe the money. When I was registering for classes, I had 4 classes I was signed up for, then I switched two for another two. Even though I replaced the two classes with new ones, they sent me back the money for them anyway. Then I owed them the money back. What really grinds my gears is that they didn't ever class or email me or anything to inform me what had happened. But yeah, my parents just want me getting my school done. I'm supposed to just run up a check Monday so, it seems everything's going to work out of the time being...
Glad you have it figured out. As for dropping a class. Everyone drops a class at some point in there college career.
