The Joys of FAFSA

"It'll only take 45 minutes" they said.

"It's so easy" they said.

THEY LIED.

Okay, it's not THAT bad, but it would have been nice to know that they had changed over from using a PIN number to using an "FSA ID" between the time my brother filled out the FAFSA and the time I filled it out. Because we thought we were going crazy when there was no place to enter your parents PIN number until we went through this lengthy process and discovered THERE IS NO PIN NUMBER ANYMORE and we had to create a whole new FSA ID!!!! Why didn't they tell us that from the beginning???????? So a word to the wise: if you have a sibling who already did the FAFSA last year or a few years ago, make sure your parents make an FSA ID and just ignore your PIN number because it's now useless. Well actually, when you're creating a new FSA ID for your parents, there's a spot where it asks for your pin number, and for some reason we had three different papers with different PIN numbers on them, and we tried all three and none of them worked. But you can complete everything without this PIN number so it's okay. Hopefully I can save you like a week of confusion.
     Secondly, they're all like "make sure you use your most recent taxes because if you don't you'll have to go back in and update your information later!" but the FAFSA is due March 1st, and your most recent taxes aren't done until April! So like, you literally CAN'T use your most recent tax information????? It's so dumb. Also, I didn't understand half the questions and kind of felt like I was just making educated (or sometimes not so educated) guesses. Which in the back of my mind makes me go "They're gonna think I'm a liar and come and get me! Or they're not gonna give me as much money because I answered them incorrectly!!!"

     Thank goodness that's all over with though. Although I'm sure they'll come back telling us some outrageous amount of money that we're supposedly able to afford even though we definitely can't. So whatever. I'm just glad the actual filling out of the application is over with.

     Anyway. It's been 9 days since I last went to school and part of me is like "ugh being at home with nothing to do for over a week got boring real fast" but the other part of me is like "ew no don't make me go back no no no no no!" On the bright side, my car is back from the garage, even though the repairs to the car cost like four times what the car itself cost which is totally stupid (but then again the car only cost like $300, so I guess it evens out in the long run).
     Can you believe January is already over? 2016 is 1/12 of the way over. That's so weird. Okay this post is a mess, so I apologize. Enjoy the last few glorious hours of your weekend.

-VaughnDL