Migration and Diaspora Studies (SOAS) 2006-07

Show me the money... | 26 Sep 2006

Today I showed up at SOAS at 11:04 to find that they were not letting anyone else into the "Studying at SOAS" Talk. Four minutes late and you can't even get it, man I'm going to learn about punctuality one or another. Although I've been really good so far, normally I show up 15-20 mins early but I just couldn't get up this morning. I'm starting to feel drained.

Although my first instinct was to go home, I decided I would try to find Mr. Tony Cullen who's the Financial Aid guy. But when I found out he was inside actually registering students I was really confused. I didn't understand why the financial aid guy was registering students instead of answering everyone's (my) financial aid questions. On the way out I saw Rasha, and decided to chill with her until she went to register. I also saw Tristan who said he was going to check out Brixton but since all I really wanted to do was go home, I opted out of that trip.

I wasn't scheduled to register until tomorrow. After a while though, I decided I would just wait in line with her just so I could meet Mr. Tony Cullen and ask him the burning question "Am I getting any Financial Aid for school?"

When I got to the front of the line, I tried my luck and sure enough they had my registration form so I went through the process until I got to the financial aid table. Luckily Tony overheard me talking to one of the other financial aid people and motioned me over to his table. So after waiting a good five minutes for him to answer everyone else's questions, he broke the news. He hadn't finished the paperwork as he was supposed to, he didn't know when he was going to get to it, he'd like to meet with me sometime after the next two weeks because he's going to be swamped BUT as far as he's concerned I can register. My Student Aid Report (that annoying FAFSA report that's coded so you don't know what type of financial aid you're gonna get) is all he needs and though he hasn't really done anything with it, he's sure I'm good. WHAT?!??!!? That would never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever happen in the good ole' U.S. of A but if it's good enough for Tony, it's good enough for me. So I bypassed everyone handing over their life-savings in the form of a check, collected my application for my student Oyster Card (the card used for the subway) and exited the premises. On the way out, I met another couple of Americans that's two more black people to add to the list. And ran back and forth getting passport photos, filling out applications for random cards, like the library cards, Student Union cards, etc. and went upstairs to submit my registration form.

Although the timetable I was given from the Faculty office was beyond confusing, I was able to figure out the codes that I wanted for all of the classes I wanted except one - Issues in the Anthropology of Education. The lady at the desk told me that I had to schedule a meeting with my Programme Convenor (Program Director) to get permission to take the class since it was not on the list of approved courses for my program and it was in another department.

So today was a pretty productive day considering I was going to shut it down at 11:05 this morning.

Locations Visited: London

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