Chan's Personal Blog

So last week, I had the privilege of paying my tuition for the last time (God willing). This may sound like good times, but there's a story behind this.

During the summer, I was talking to my prof about my academic schedule. I was taking my last two courses, and I was contemplating writing and defending my thesis in the summer. The odds of me actually doing it in time for Fall convocation was fairly low, so I decided to conduct a Fall offensive on the thesis. In addition, during the summer, a lot of professors are gone, so it would have been a scheduling nightmare for the defence.

By the time summer had ended, I had paid for five terms worth of grad school. The academic calendar says that you pay for five terms worth of full-time school. Every term after that, you pay a small registration fee. So I thought, great, going into the Fall, I'll finish my thesis, and it'll only cost me a few hundred bucks for the next term.

Come September, I look at my bills for tuition, and the total is in the thousands! Oh my, this must be a mistake. So I talk to my grad advisor and she says that she doesn't deal with finances, but it's crazy to have to pay thousands of dollars if I've already paid up for five terms, and all I have left is the thesis.

I head over to the Department of Graduate Studies to inquire about my bill, and they don't budge. Apparently the computer science academic calendar isn't exactly the same as the graduate studies' calendar. In the graduate studies' calendar, it says that you pay for five full-time school terms. If you need one more term to write your thesis, then it's ANOTHER full-time school term you have to pay for. Everything after that, there's a small registration fee. Crap.

I totally wasn't expecting to pay several thousands for tuition yet again, but I had to. It seems fairly pricey to pay that much money if all I'm doing is writing a thesis. I don't use office space supplied by the Department of Computer Science, I don't use their computers, I wasn't taking anymore courses, I don't even see my supervisor professor. I write my thesis at home, and it's costing me several thousand.

Luckily, I always maintain a buffer of cash in my savings account for such unexpected occasions, so I was able to pay the darn thing off. To make matters worse though, there was an accounting error on my August paycheque, so I didn't get my full pay until last week. The cash reserves are running a tad low though after being in school for this many years. Lets hope my shares of AMD goes to $100/share .

Just to rub salt in the old wounds, my brother comes to me last week and asks to borrow hundreds of dollars for a new toy. I wasn't impressed.

So, currently feeling a tad poor....er.