Leios8

It's not that my dreams have changed. That's not the case at all. All I have ever wanted since I was a child was to sing and act. That's what I've done my entire life. Nothing else has ever come close to bring me as much joy and sense of completion as being on stage.

If you've been following me at all (I'm on twenty-three million social sites, I'm sure- lol!), then you know that I am a theatre major, who has been in pursuit of a Musical Theatre degree for years now. Well, I did finally get into a decent department that held a lot of promise. My financial aid record looked great. So, with money for school, and a school to be able to spend it on, I was headed for West Texas A&M University.

You know that terrible thing that happens to people who get close to realizing their dreams? Yeah, the part where they have it within reach, and then some cruel external force reaches in and yanks away? That happened to me.

After my adviser and I discussed what my schedule would look like for the fall 2009 semester, I received a nasty letter from the registrar's office telling me that I had no right to register through my adviser because of a hold that had been placed on my file. I called the school to sort things out, and they said that what they had to tell me was uber confidential. They asked me to appear at the school to discuss my situation.

Well, the situation is that they re-counted all the undergrad hours I had accumulated up until now, and they have tallied the number to be right where one needs to be for a school to stop providing financial aid. Furthermore, the policy at WT is that once that occurs, you are also then charged out-of-state tuition and you can only register with permission through the registrar's office.

I was furious! I will stand firm in my decision to not take responsibility for what has happened to me. I am the victim of bureaucratic folly. The reason I had so many hours is because I had double majored in Music and Theatre at my junior college, but apparently that's not a kosher thing to do in the state of Texas. The Texas Higher Education Board deems it necessary to get students into and out of their institutions as quickly as possible, regardless of whether or not the student feels they have gotten the education they signed up for.

In a nutshell, the school gave me one option. If I ever wanted to be able to afford to pay for school again, or to have control over my scheduling and registering activities, then for this next year I will have to complete thirty hours of upper-level electives and graduate with a degree in general studies by May, with a strict rule stating that I was not allowed to take any Music or Theatre classes as said electives. Otherwise I would be at the mercy of the school and the deans' board on whether or not I should be allowed to stay in school.

I spoke to counselors all over campus trying to get at least one person to understand that the hours I have earned weren't a mistake, but rather an attemp at double majoring. Every one of them turned a deaf ear. I looked into perhaps dealing with a different school altogether, but everywhere I turned I came up against the same wall.

So, I have decided to suck it up and for this next year I will take upper level electives. Fortunately, I have taken enough lower level Literature classes that I have all the pre-reqs done in that area of study. Therefore, all the classes I'll be taking this next year are all Senior level English and Literature classes.

Once I finish this year, I will have earned my first Bachelor's degree. I know, it's only a BGS, but it'll be something. Anyway, once I've earned it I will be allowed to do whatever I want again, meaning that I can finally get back to studying my beloved art once again.

It kills me to attend my classes this semester, though, because the center where the Lit classes are taught is next door to the Fine Arts center. I'm sad, but it's gonna be okay. If anything, all these Lit classes will help me become more intellectually involved when it comes to analyzing scripts and characters in the future.

Here's to the future!