Blind Prophecy

After wrestling with insomnia for the last week or so, I pulled an all-nighter Wednesday night and finally got a full night sleep last night. I woke up early this morning because of a rather powerful electrical storm. Specifically, a clap of thunder that sounded very much like someone had thrown a large dumpster into our backyard with some force. There was no getting back to sleep even after my heart rate returned to normal, but now I’m up, showered and shaved and ready to tackle the day.

I think I’m going to take some paperwork over to the neighborhood cafe and hang out for a while, just to stop living in my room 24 hours a day. I might head over to the recently opened Take the Cake (cool website) for lunch. I realize I’ve been a bit of an anti-social twit since retail job fizzled out post-holidays.

I got notice of a merit scholarship to Fordham yesterday, which is currently my first choice of the schools I’ve been accepted to. The scholarship came to $15k per year, but as Fordham is one of the most expensive schools in the country (largely due to the spectacular cost of living price tag of Midtown/Upper West Side Manhattan), I’ve still got to figure out the finances on the remaining $50k/year. Much of that will be student loans (credit willing!), and Cardozo’s merit scholarship offer is much more generous, but I can’t really compare apples to apples as far as loan debt goes until we finish the financial aid process and I find out if I qualify for need-based scholarships or grants from the schools. I have to harass mom and dad for their tax forms this weekend, since one of the schools has a March 2 deadline for financial aid applications.

It sucks that even though I will celebrate the third anniversary of my 29th birthday this year, law schools still have to check that mommy and daddy aren’t secret billionaires sending their boy to law school on financial aid. My parents certainly have other priorities right now than doing their taxes early.

I also got really frustrated with my undergrad school yesterday. I need to get records of the financial aid I received while working toward my BA. I have records of the loans, but I have no idea where to find paperwork on my grants and scholarships. My alma mater seems to be stuck in a 90s mentality about internet security. Apparently, to request that info, they need a hand-written letter mailed to them. When I asked about faster options, they suggested I send them a fax (really? why is anyone still using a fax machine anymore?). I asked if I could email them a scanned PDF of handwritten note instead. “Absolutely not! It’s not safe and could be intercepted by anyone.” “Are you kidding? Are you telling me that you think a fax phone line leading into an office with who-knows-how-many people wandering around is more secure than your password secured email?” “Our policy is meant to protect your privacy.” “You know what would protect my privacy? A password-locked PDF I email to you followed by a phone call to verify my identity and obtain the password. But whatever, I don’t want to argue, I just think it’s dumb.” I ended up sending them a fax-via-email (because, you know, we don’t have a fax machine or even a land line in the house), so we both sort of win. Except that I don’t, because they’ll only release that information by mailing it to me and that means I won’t get it until its too late to be helpful. On the plus side, the financial aid office at the school requesting that information told me it was really okay if I just guessed and estimated.

There was plenty of good news around Casa de Diggs yesterday, as Jacob finally has a really good prospect at employment. If all goes well, we’ll have a house full of people bringing in paychecks when I start tutoring job in two and a half weeks. This has led to discussion of actually getting a car, which will open up options for getting out and seeing more of the city and Midwest while we’re here.

Anyway. Mostly personal updates this morning because I’ve heard from family that I don’t update them often enough about the personal stuff.

Filed under: law school, personal by Jere Keys