Monday, November 19, 2007

I Got Debts No Honest Man Can Pay

Want to know how badly I'm fucked for this one post-doc application? They need original transcripts. I can't get those because my school's registrar won't give transcripts to students without outstanding health insurance bills. But I can't afford to pay my health insurance bills right now because all my money's getting spent applying to jobs and post-docs. Like this one that needs my fucking transcripts.

Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

This serious sucks. I was in the same situation with my own grad school. My bill had to be paid to under $100 or no transcripts. That seems fucked to me.

Anonymous said...

I doubt your application will be rejected out of hand simply for this reason, or even that it will be ranked any lower... I'd just send copies of the transcripts for now, and deal with the issue of originals later. I don't think most committees really care about the originals until further along in the screening processes.

Anonymous said...

I wonder if readers of this blog would kick in some money if you set up a paypal account or such. I don't know how those things usually go, but they're attempted surprisingly often. It might be worth a shot, depending on the dollar amount of the insurance, obviously. Otherwise: does your department offer "emergency loans" for expenses? Some do. I assume using the little plastic cards isn't an option, since that would surely have occurred to you in this day and age, if it were.

I'd donate a bit of money, FYI. But I know it's easier to give than to receive. Still, you really shouldn't have to drop your insurance for all this.

Pseudonymous Grad Student said...

Anon. 5:21 --

I appreciate the thought--believe me, I do. But while my dept doesn't offer "emergency loans", the good people at Visa do, so I hope to make this work.

Of course, at this point I'm quite literally banking on getting a job for next year. . . .

Sisyphus said...

Oi!!! Me too. Good luck!

(and I love how, if your place is anything like mine, you have to show proof of paying health insurance before you register ... no prioritizing for yourself where your meager funds go, oh grad- student-child!)

Anonymous said...

If they ask for transcripts then either the committee wants them or they are forced to ask for them according to some university requirement. If the committee wants transcripts then they are so stupid you don’t want the job. If the university requires transcripts and your application will not be processed without them, then either the committee has no idea how to operate in a bureaucracy (ie. if asked later during an audit that will never take place plead ignorance--say that the transcripts seem to have been misplaced) or the bureaucracy is horribly invasive. In either case, you don’t want to work there. So, don’t send the transcripts. If you still get a call, it’s a good sign.

Bobcat said...

Re: anonymous 11:16

I hear this a lot: dept x requires something stupid (call it y). Given how silly y is, and the available explanations for why x requires y, you shouldn't want to work at x.

Well, no. A place can be stupid in one way and quite wonderful in many others. Plus, the reasons for y might be different from any of our available explanations.

Anonymous said...

We're still paying off the little plastic cards from the job market, and I'm in my second year of a tt position in a low cost-of-living area.

Nonetheless it is going to take years...