Rolling up my sleeves

As you well know by now, I am a poor college student. And, as such I must pay for almost all of my current expenses with loans. As I have previously mentioned, loans are now nearly impossible to obtain without a cosigner or a credit history of any significant length. Without loans, expenses are left unpaid. This includes the apartment I signed a lease for.

In response to this, I talked with my landlord. He was very calm as he said "I can understand where you are coming from. I had another student leave on me during the first part of the summer, and we got the apartment filled. But, you are responsible for finding someone." My heart sank as I heard what I knew he was going to say. He thanked me for coming in and I left.

I drove back to Clarkson's library and sat down. I furiously made 80 copies of a poster I had drawn up that detailed how glorious the apartment was and got to work. For hours I walked around Potsdam. I went to both universities and every high traffic business I could find. Surprisingly only one business denied me the privilege of putting up a notice on their premises.

I then drove home, my feet and legs weary from wandering through the woe begotten streets littered with ragamuffins and aging hippies. I grew more disheartened with every "for rent" sign I passed. As I sat I planned my next move. I was going to reclaim my phone from it's charger and place classified ads in all the local newspapers.

After I arrived home I went out to eat with my girlfriend, as I was looking for any excuse to take a break from worrying. Eventually I returned home and began listening to my voice mail before calling the papers. I relieved an odd voice mail that only said "Matt your off the hook, call me back." Instinctively I called my landlord who told me that in the hour since I put up the posters he had received over a dozen calls. I had successfully gotten rid of my apartment that I could not pay for. Even though I will be getting back 250 dollars, and I will not have to pay the 4000 in rent not including utilities, I was still sad that I would have to commute. I guess there are worse things to endure.

My Kingdom for a Cosigner

So, I have gotten most of my loans for this academic year through the government. However, I am six thousand dollars short of my housing needs. This means that I would have to commute from Massena every day if I don't get a loan. The reason I am having tremendous trouble getting this small loan is because I do not have a cosigner. Now, I know that a cosigner is a big deal. However, this is just a small six thousand dollar loan. I will have no problem paying it back.

I'm not asking for money or a handout. I cannot stress that enough. However, I just need a little help here. In my specific case, a cosigner's signature is little more than permission to get the funds I need. There is zero risk. I just need someone to sign and basically walk away. I would work four jobs before I allowed someone else to pay my way. This is so frustrating.

If you are about to go to college make sure you have a cosigner on your loans. Investigate new up front fees like origination fees. Some loans even force you to give them up to five percent of the principal back to them upon receiving the loan, as a payment. And, don't even get me started on companies requiring students to pay interest fees while still in school. I never thought I would see the day when it would be this difficult to get a measley six grand. Considering the fact that most private schools charge between 30 to 40 grand a year in tuition and other fees.


Sometimes you just gotta rant it out...

College Loans

So I just got back from Clarkson University Student Administrative Services where I talked to a counselor about my aid and bills for college. It turns out that when they factor in all the government aid, I'm out of the hole by over two grand. However, I still have four grand in housing, a grand for books, and more for electricity and internet since I am off campus. While being out of the hole is nice it still leaves me with the problem of how to pay the extra six grand.

Now, in the past it has hardly been an issue to stress because they would just tell us which lender to talk to and that would be pretty much it. But thanks to this wonderful recession we find ourselves in, they are not even allowed to tell us who to go to. In fact, the are legally bound to withhold that information because some universities were getting kickbacks from lenders. Thank God my University wasn't one of them.

I'm not in hot water yet. We can still go back to the our previous lenders and talk to them. But, I feel bad for all of the incoming freshmen. They must be having a very difficult time trying to find lenders. I can only imagine what it would be like trying to get loans, having never done it, and also having counselors who can't even point you in the right direction. Good luck to them, I guess that is what Yahoo Answers is for.

I'll keep you guys up to speed on this mess,
Later

Regarding Bruno

Bruno is a feature length film released on July tenth of this year. The film was directed by Larry Charles and written in part by the star of the movie Sacha Baron Cohen, who plays Bruno. Bruno is the story of a famous Austrian fashion reporter who falls from grace and travels to Los Angeles to regain world wide fame. Bruno is much like Cohen's previous movie Borat in that the movie contains two types of scenes. The first type is the traditional story telling scene where the characters interact and the plot moves forward. The second type consists of the character Bruno interacting with individuals in real life situations where he acts so flamboyantly in your face with his homosexuality that it brings out a plethora of different reactions from your everyday American. These reactions range from the benign to outrage. Overall, I would say that it was a good viewing experience but not a great one. The advertisements gave away too much. I will leave you with one warning concerning the movie. If you are not comfortable with full frontal male and female nudity, or scenes of that nature, then do not see Bruno.