OK, time to exhale...whew!

As Marina, my Financial Aid Counselor, put it: "You have nothing to worry about, you owe us nothing...as a matter of fact, we owe you."

The reason why I showed on the Business Office's records as owing money was that there are financial aid monies which will not be released for another two weeks. They will be released at the beginning of October.

Goddess bless Dr. Gilbert...she walked into Financial Aid around the same time I was there freaking out. She was quite pleased that I had taken the initiative to find out what was wrong, and I was quite pleased that she was there being supportive. I have a real ally in her, along the same lines as Dr. Rosow at LAVC.

The reason I have managed to get this far, in spite of all the roadblocks I have had to bust through, is because:

1. I have been able to keep myself the best-organized I have ever been in my entire life for the time I have been first at LAVC and now here at Woodbury;


2. I fight like a momma bear whose cubs are in danger when faced with any sort of obstacle. You don't screw around with an angry momma bear.

I feel very relieved. I have been agonizing about this all weekend, to the point where more than a few people were as freaked as I was.

Oh yeah, on my way here to Woodbury, I picked up my diploma. It looks good and feels even better than that. I will have to stop in at a copy shop to get some color and black-and-white copies done. Just copying this in black-and-white won't do it justice.

What feels best is that I have come full circle. It took me 25 years from the point when I first took classes at LAVC to where I came by to pick up the coveted paper. Better late than never. If I could do this, anyone can. For those in a similar situation, you owe it to yourself to finish what you started.

This changes nothing with respect to the state of the world. It's still a damn ugly place and getting uglier with every passing day. I'm still too broke to even pay attention, and I still can't really do much more than shoot my mouth off in response to Hurricane Dubya. However, I have taken the initiative to better my own life. At least here I have a degree of self-efficacy.