John is Good To Go

Well, things never really improved with CNM. That was a shame, but it was what it was, and it turned out so much better in the end.

He did get into some classes, which was great. Ish. (The instruction was a bit of a mixed bag. It's pretty horrifying what college instructors are doing and saying in the name of being "the cool teachers". There are still those, though, even at CNM, who show intelligence and integrity while they man their post in front of a class of students. They are so appreciated.) They still hadn't bothered to look for his official scores and transcripts. It was crazy.

We had submitted the waiver for residency and his two "overt acts" for declaring intent to establish residency. (NM State law allows for students to receive in-state tuition if they have relocated here for a parent's job and are willing to declare their own intent to remain here.) What CNM doesn't tell you on their website, or in person, is that of the 11 acts that they say you need to have accomplished at least two of, what they really mean is there are only two on there that they will actually acknowledge. Good luck guessing which two! And they won't tell you until after the deadline! They denied his petition. Wee! We spoke to a supervisor. She also denied the petition. We asked to whom we could appeal, and she said no one.

Okay, then.

I went home to transfer money from savings (at this point, I was feeling rather defeated and didn't want to be an obstacle in John's path forward) and planned to pay his tuition in the morning. Except bright and early the next morning, as we sat down to take care of business, John forwarded me an email he'd just received announcing he'd been dis-enrolled for non payment. (At some point, you'd think I'd have gotten a clue that if it's THIS difficult to work with this institution, then there's probably something I'm not getting, like, I don't know, this isn't where he ought to be. But I am slow.)

I told him to go ahead and re-enroll and then I'd log in and pay right then (since the funds had transferred). The process for re-enrolling, however, is quite complicated, and not listed anywhere on the school's website. You cannot register online for a class after the registration period has ended. He contacted the one helpful person we'd found at CNM who explained to him how to get it done. You have to email each professor and ask for permission to re-enroll in their class. Then they will, at their leisure, issue a manual override to permit you to re-enroll. There is no notification process in the system letting you know when you're good to go. You just have to keep trying until it works. The instructors have no time limit in which to complete this, because they're doing you a favor, but the payment clock starts ticking the minute you get your first class re-enrolled. And you'll be dis-enrolled if you haven't wrapped it up and paid by the time that clock strikes done. Again, because they're doing you a favor.

Well then.

I asked my brother-in-law if he could help us navigate the bureaucracy, but from everyone he spoke with he really just heard, "Yeah, this is how they roll now. It stinks." :-O Wow. He suggested we go to UNM-Valencia and talk to them. We hadn't really considered the UNM system. It's HYUGE, and we thought it would be worse at a larger institution. But why not give it a try?

I emailed the contact BIL had given me. John submitted an application. He doubled checked his Bag of Holding to make sure he still had everything. (ACT score report, unofficial transcripts from both high school and college, high school diploma, NREMT certification, BLS certification, etc. - all the same material he had brought with him to CNM) I submitted all the official requests that fall to the parent to request (or, more accurately, pay for). Mid-morning, I received an email reply, "I'll be here until 4. Come on by any time!" So down we went.

Y'all. We walked in there cold and walked out an hour and a half later with a graduation plan, a contact for who will evaluate his EMS credits, a full fall schedule, fully registered, with books, a parking pass, a student ID, a map of the campus, and the assurance that he will be coded as an in-state resident for tuition purposes once he turns in one form. (Also of note: he turned it in the next day and they issued him a bill for the in-state tuition. I paid it that day!) We could not get that far in six weeks of diligent effort at the community college here.

And now, he has money left over to buy a commuter car. He has a four-year plan once again. He knows where he stands, what he needs, and what he will need to accomplish in order to reach his goals. This was crazy hard to navigate, and he kept his cool, made sure he did the right thing at every step, kept communicating. I am gobsmacked.

Of course, because of the runaround at the community college, we wasted a lot of time extending good faith to them, and so he's starting the semester a week behind in his hardest subject. Again, what a difference growing up makes! He's been on it every day since he got home from registering, and he's nearly caught up to where the class will be next week.