  Money Stinks, Unless You Have Lots Of It the financial aid budget for this year was just released onto the drab and barely functional MCO financial aid website.
a few observations need be made: 1. apparently the cost of living has actually NOT increased , even though i'm paying twice as much for gas and my rent has gone up. at least that's what kathryn coy will have you believe. we have the EXACT same budget numbers as we did when we started this whole game, almost three years ago. i'd like to see her personal fucking budget to see if it went up. well, she has lost more hair, so she probably spends a lot more money on hairpieces. 2. they have so graciously budgeted $975 to pay for another step in the licensing exam series that will start when we are fourth year students.
here's the deal: it's a clinical skills exam, it's all day, there are only around three testing centers nationally, and no one knows where they are. oh yeah, and there is predictably NO money in the budget for travel expenses or hotel rooms for the night before the test. so i'll be thinking of them when i eat my motherfucking ramen noodles, since i will have no money left for nutritive foods. only salt licks. 3. does this make sense to you? Summer Semester ( 2 months )=$5990 tuition Fall Semester ( 4 months )=$8900 tuition Spring Semester ( 6 months )=$8900 tuition so let me get this shit straight: i'm paying $2995 per month for summer tuition, $2225 per month for fall, and $1483 per month for spring? come again? do i get higher quality teaching in the summer? do the school's president and all the members of the board of trustees have to pay their greens fees with my summer tuition?
here's an offer they won't be able to refuse: how about i just pay TWICE for spring, and then they can let me go to school in the summer and fall! eureka! 4. every year we get charged $55 for a yearbook fee . the "funny" thing is that they are something like 6 years behind in publishing this "yearbook", so i'll probably never see it. the money must be going to something more worthwhile, like buying cheap hookers so the Ph.D.s can get laid once in a while.
5. the icing on the shitcake : MCO rents us out as slave labor to rural health facilities, because it doesn't have a big enough hospital system to take us all for clinical rotations. we have to live in the little rat hole places we're working (for weeks at a time--sometimes as long as six weeks for one rotation), and hope that we have a spouse/friend/partner/classmate who can check our mail and bring in the paper so our house doesn't get robbed.
we are REQUIRED to do at least 8 weeks away. the devious part is that this program is funded by state grants and private donations (i.e. NOT my tuition money). so basically MCO gets my tuition money whether i study there or whether i study in Butt Fucking Egypt, Ohio. once again, i hope they are using it to buy heroin or whores or something good. excuse the unladylike language, kids. i'm about to enjoy a dinner of leftovers, and not leftover lobster, if you were wondering. 
