Aided

So I was notified this week that I will get enough in grants and loans to pay for college in the fall.

That's a major hurdle cleared.

Cost, even bigger than the prospect of taking math and biology again, has been my most significant worrying point.

Without aid, I'm cooked.

I should expect my award letter in the mail presently, but I can go online anyway to see what I'm getting, versus what I will be expected to pay. It goes something like this:

They estimate the cost of room and board, books, tuition and travel and come up with a price for each semester. Then they take your need, based on financial data.

I am expected to pay around $18,000 for one year.

My NEED is ... ready for this? ... $18,000.

Meaning, I am not expected to contribute anything financially, based on our income, cost of living, etc. Well, that's a farce of sorts. I mean, I got grants to cover much of it, but I will be taking out student loans that need paying back, when I graduate.

So therefore my first lesson as a college freshmen?

Put off til tomorrow what you should probably pay for today.

Finance 101.

The professor's name? Something Madoff.

In other collegiate news...I got a twinge in my side yesterday while reading the newspaper's sporting section. They had an article in there about the possibility of the UMaine system cutting some sports programs in the fall, including soccer.

I played soccer in high school and, every summer, would trudge back to the playing pitch for the ritual preseason training. Lots of running. Shit loads. Miles and miles. Before ever touching a soccer ball, just to get us slacker teens back into shape.

It worked.

I would die for those days now, the days of feeling like a tuned Chevy. Of stepping onto the pitch and playing 80 minutes of non-stop action. Summer heat turning to the crisp snap of fall afternoons, when the slap of the ball on your thigh left a welt for three days.

I wonder. If they don't cut the program, would Farmington allow me to try out?

Same goes for their music program. It's not at risk of being cut. I mean, I wonder if I picked up my trumpet ... the one I haven't played since 1987 ... would I get a seat in their concert band? Boy that would sound awful. Like squeezing a duck through a straw.

I will say this about the prospect of college. I was thinking back to when I was in high school. I dreaded my days. I never looked forward to school in the morning. I looked upon my coursework with drudgery and harbored malice in my heart toward my teachers.

Now, I see the course selection, and there's not one I am not excited to tackle. Even the maths and sciences, my absolute scholastic nemeses growing up. I am so jacked up about attending again, of proving to myself (and others in my life) that poor grades in high school did not make me an idiot.

Being an idiot made me an idiot.

Poor grades just made me sick.