I am a full-time astrophysics student, 5 years into a bachelor’s degree through a university in Florida. During COVID I moved out of state to live with my now fiancée, and began taking classes online. Eventually I transitioned to transient enrollment, where I would take classes at another university and transfer the credits back to my home institution. This is because completely transferring to a university was not an option as I was too far along in my degree. Transient enrollment has several issues, the main two being that I must pay for my transient courses out of pocket, and that I must send my transcripts back to the home university. These are not difficult things to meet, you would think. The financing issue is usually solved by the fact that my transient classes start about a month later than my home university’s semester, so I can usually get a refund from my home college for access financial aid and use that to cover my transient classes in time, and transcripts are usually easy enough to submit if I have the $10.
During the fall 2022 semester I was overloaded with work, and a professor offered to let me delay an exam until after the semester. I agreed and planned on doing the exam during the end of the month or the beginning of January at the latest. I sent the professor a few emails asking after a date for the exam, and when I learned he would be going to Antarctica for about a month, I asked to set up a separate professor to proctor the exam. This email must have been missed, or the professor assumed my taking of the exam was not exactly urgent and forgot to respond. Upon his return I did manage to schedule the exam and I took the exam this past Monday, but he has fallen ill and has not been able to update my grade. What this means is that my transcript is now 2 months late, and still cannot be submitted to my home university.
About three weeks ago I found out that my financial aid was being denied because I had not taken enough classes. I did not receive a clear email, I instead only found this out through random digging through my financial aid pages on the school’s website. The financial aid office and my academic advisor failed to explain or reach onto me about this, and I spent about 2 weeks trying to get into contact with them to see if I had any emergency options to get my financial aid. It took 2 weeks to get a resounding no.
I had not taken enough classes partly because only 1 or 2 of the remaining classes I need for my major are available each semester, and partly because 2 of the classes I had taken were on the transcripts from my transient university that I could not yet submit. At this point, even if I were to get my grades submitted today, I would not see the money from my financial aid for at least a week if not two.
Tomorrow, the 17th of February is my deadline for payment at my transient university, after which point, I will be automatically dropped from all classes. To stay in, I need to pay at least half of what I owe, and then I’m only dropped on the 18th of march if I still fail to pay. I’ve asked my parents and friends and even my fiancée’s family for help, but all are riddled with financial burdens of their own and can’t spare that kind of cash on a moment’s notice even with a promise of repayment. I’ve been recommended to just drop the classes, but some of these courses only happen one semester a year, and I’m already long over when I was supposed to have graduated due to COVID and a lack of available courses.
If you’d be willing to help, I need exactly $483.99 ($473.99 for the classes, $10 for the transcripts.) to fully pay off the classes, but only $247 to stay enrolled until mid-March unless my financial aid finally unfreezes before then. Anything more than that would simply help pay for gas and future semesters. Thank you so much for reading this, I know my situation is weird and a bit confusing, and it’s not the most life-threatening thing, but my degree and my career prospects are important to me, and it’s hard to continue when stupid situations like this happen. If you consider throwing even a cent my way, I am forever grateful.
https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/noahwom