Higher Education? (Part One)

At some point I came up with the brilliant idea of getting my Masters after getting my Bachelors almost 5 years ago - WOW how time flies! My GPA wasn't quite high enough to be more than borderline for acceptance into the schools I am interested in, so I'm going to need to take a few classes to boost the GPA of my last 30-60 units. The cheapest way to accomplish this? Community college.

Today I got up bright and early to get to Fullerton College by 9:00 AM when all of the Student Services opened. On the agenda: last name change, student ID, parking permit, books for the one class I'm taking.

Forgetting that I'm dealing with a community college, when I arrive at 9:10 I walk right up to the counter to start the process. Did I really think college students would be waiting in line at 9:00 AM? Silly me. For the name change I complete a form while the girl photocopies my drivers license. Easy enough.

Checking that off my agenda, I tell her that I need to pay for my ID card and parking permit. She keys the items in and then stares puzzled at the screen for a few seconds. She then says to me, "Sorry this is confusing, I'll be right back." She brings back an adult. She explains that I need to pay for both the ID and permit even though my account has a credit because I dropped one of the two classes that I registered for, as I will be receiving a refund check for the credit. This is what I expected and didn't understand how this could be so confusing as I couldn't possibly have been the first person to have done this.

With my receipt in hand I head over to the building to pick up the parking permit and ID. So far so good and had things gone smoothly from there, this blog topic would not have been shared...however this is already rather lengthy, so I'll save the rest (and the best) for Part Two. To be continued...