I am ESTATIC that I’ll soon be a member of School of Information Studies at Syracuse University (iSchool). However, it’s been a rather very hard past couple months. I’ve been on a yo-yo between Syracuse University’s Office of Financial Aid and Scholarship Programs and Direct Loans, studentloans.gov, the U.S. Department of Education, Common Origination and Disbursement (COD) School Relations Center, etc. trying to finalize a loan so I could go pursue my MLIS at the The School of Information Studies at Syracuse University (iSchool).

It has been quite an arduous and, at times, upsetting experience. Long story short, there were many emails, letters, phone calls and faxes and an ongoing finger pointing exercise between Financial Aid and the various government organizations listed above.

Drove me BONKERS and was hanging over my head for MONTHS.

I kept pretty detailed notes on emails, phone calls, faxes and letters as well as promised timelines and the names of involved parties. During this frustrating period my vengeful side kept saying, ‘When everything gets worked out, unleash this beast of negative exposure and get people in trouble.’ I opted against that and literally got rid of all non-essential documents and records related to the loan. It felt good to purge those feelings and memories.

I’ve had to keep a lot of this under wraps at work for obvious reasons but FINALLY this Monday I got that giving notice thing at work taken care of. Next? Update Facebook. Done. Update LinkedIn. Done…Work…….YES…finally done. I was originally hoping to give work notice at least 2 weeks earlier but due to the delays with the aforementioned Financial Aid, I couldn’t do it until this week. I was really hoping to be in Syracuse at the beginning of August, then go out to LA for Emily and Nick’s wedding, then return to Syracuse, but I just couldn’t leave my employer high and dry. I’ve worked there too long and have to much respect for the organization to do otherwise. Gotta finish strong and transition appropriately.

So essentially it’s all over now. On to the next chapter in life. Gave my notice at work on Monday. In other news, I just watched The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (Man som hatar kvinnor). Great movie. Haven’t read the book.

So I’m still holding my breath, but it appears that after roughly 1.5 months, SU Financial Aid finally got their act together and granted me the loan needed to pursue my MLIS. This time was nothing but stress and annoyance for me. Unfortunately there still are some issues but I’m fairly optimistic things will work out. I’ll write more later, but now I have another note of administrative disconnect/mismanagement.

I get an email from SU Housing with the Subject header: ‘Reminder – you have not yet submiitted your required ID Card photo!’

What’s funny/curious/lame is that this is the FIRST contact they’ve made regarding this matter. Whats also interesting is that they’re advising that I should submit my ID card photo after activating my SU email. This is the first I’ve been notified of that and have no record of how to proceed on that. I contacted the IT help dept.

Based on my experiences so far, I have a funny feeling that this latest slew of activities will be far from the last.

According to an Interior Department report, staff members at an agency that oversees offshore drilling accepted tickets to sports events, lunches and other gifts from oil and gas companies and used government computers to view pornography. Awesome!…Not. Read the rest here on Yahoo.

Paul Rademacher is really awesome for coming up with this  tool for comparing the size of BP’s oil spill to cities around the world. From his site:

On April 20th, an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon left 17 workers injured and 11 missing and presumed dead. Oil is spilling from a well 5000 feet below sea level, discharging 200,000 gallons of crude oil a day according to the official estimate. It is estimated that more than 6 million gallons of crude oil have spewed into the Gulf so far.