Where Do I Protest the New Student Loan Web Site?

With all the protests and anti-government, anti-bailout, anti-establishment, anti-corporate-greed, anti-being-anti-stuff going around, I have been too content to just sit back and watch everyone get faux riled up about a whole lot of things that they don't even fully understand. Let's face it, this OWS movement is more fractured than my little toe after trying (and failing) to defeat the door frame in the laundry room last week. If there are 300 people protesting, they have 300 different reasons why. I have no cause to protest: I went to school thanks to a government-fronted student loan. I have been laid off twice in two years, and I'm currently unemployed. Frustrating? Sure, but it's my burden to bear...and I don't feel the need to take it out on a city park with a bunch of hippies. I mean, what can I complain about? I'm well educated thanks to Uncle Sam, and while the job market isn't really ideal, it's not anyone's fault that I'm unemployed. I could've taken a lower-paying job last year but I didn't, and now I'm suffering due to my own sense of elitist optimism. I am not owed a job. Or a paycheck. Or what I think I'm worth.

But after today, I'm joining a new movement that I just started. It's called "Occupy: Hire a Web Developer Who Knows What He/She Is Doing." I'm protesting the government's student loan web site. Those of you who enjoyed receiving an education thanks to Direct Student Loans may feel my pain here, but for your sake I hope you have not recently found cause to log into the "NEW AND IMPROVED!" "TOTALLY REVAMPED!" "STREAMLINED FOR YOUR CONVENIENCE!" "UNNECESSARILY CHANGED!" student loan web site. It is utter and complete shit. Sorry about the strong language, but there's no other appropriate term.

At the beginning of October, I logged onto the old student loan web site to update my information and to further my forbearance. See, when you're unemployed the government is nice enough to let you skip student loan payments until you get back on your feet. Sweet, huh? Yeah, I appreciate it. So, last October (2010) I asked them to excuse me from paying my loans for one year. Maybe I'm psychic, but I thought that I might need some time to get back into the world of the working. They obliged me, we shook hands, albeit electronically, and we went along our merry way. They continued to charge me interest, which is fair enough, and I continued to think that by October 2011 I would be employed and ready to repay my debt to the government. I was wrong.

My first payment of 2011 to the government was slated for October 21, 2011. A tidy little sum of $250 was going to be debited from my bank account on that day, and as a workless woman, that amount seems like so much money right now. I really do want to repay my loans, and I have been repaying them since I was 23 years old, but now is not the time. I logged onto the old, trusty web site to further extend my forbearance and I got an ugly announcement that it was being reformulated and wouldn't be available for use until October 11, 2011. (In fact, this web site was going to be obliterated from the web entirely and replace by a whole new system! GOODY!) That was cutting it close, but I figured I would wait. Then I figured I shouldn't wait, so I called the Department of Education hoping that a little human to human contact would solve my plight. It did not. The lady at the other end, who I'm sure was taking her 5,003,241 call of the day simply told me she couldn't help me and I just would have to wait for the web site to be launched. *Gulp* For some reason, I was nervous about this whole scenario.

On October 11, full of the anticipation of a kid on Christmas morning who knows that Santa is a prick and was only going to leave a pack of socks and a lump of coal, I tried to log onto the web site. No luck. It was experiencing "a high volume of traffic" and was down. Awesome! I mean, how many other people could be unemployed and buried under five-figure student loan debt from a liberal arts degree that didn't magically turn into a fulfilling, long-term and high-paying job in the arts? Oh...that many, huh? Shitballs.

On October 12, full of skepticism, I tried to log in again. The web site sort of loaded, but it sputtered more than my mom's old Chevy Cavalier when the catalytic converter crapped out. I spent 35 minutes trying to load and reload the site to no avail.

On October 13, I tried again.

On October 14, I ignored the site and lamented that being mega-pregnant was preventing me from having a beer.

On October 15, I logged in. The new site was a mess. Sure it's new, sure it looks different than the old one, but it didn't improve my experience AT ALL. It was confusing. It was convoluted. It STILL DIDN'T WORK RIGHT. Son of a...

On October 17, I was able to log in after 3 tries and then somehow found my way into my account. I tried to sign up for a forbearance, but they said I wasn't qualified under the "unemployment forbearance" or the "economic hardship forbearance." The reason for that is I'm not collecting unemployment. See, if I was suckling off the government then they'd be totally cool with me not paying them, but since I'm trying to get by on my own...since I'm trying to do the all-American thing and pull myself by my own bootstraps...since I'm "Making my way in the world today takes everything you got," they don't believe me. It seems that the only way they were going to help me out was if I was teaching English at an inner-city public school that faced southeast and had two floors, not including a gymnasium, and a principal who was once in the Peace Corps but didn't really find it fulfilling and came back jaded and decided that suppressing the teenage angst of schoolkids was his only way to get back at the world. I might have just made that up, but it's close to the truth.

Finally, the next day, I felt like I had gotten somewhere. Now, mind you, my payment was due October 21, so this is looking bad for me. I signed in, got the "approval" of this evil little web site for my forbearance, and I logged off. Whew! Payment averted!

Nope.

A few days later I got a notice from my bank that my account was overdrawn thanks to the student loan payment that did not get deducted on the 21st, but instead on the 24th (I think they're just trying to keep me on my toes).

I wrote a not-nice email to whoever the poor sap is who has to read emails from the Direct Student Loan web site. I called them, but they were conveniently "Not Taking Calls At This Time." Hmm, I wonder why that is? Oh, because you just pissed off everybody ever, that's why. Good idea. I called my bank and they told me there's nothing they could do for me. My $250 (some of which was imaginary money that never existed in my account in the first place) was gone to the government. That's alright...groceries are overrated anyway.

A week later, I signed on to that damned web site and again submitted for a forbearance. It didn't work the first time. The second time though, I got a step further than I ever had! I got a little pop-up message that said my request had been logged! OH JOYOUS DAY! It even said that it was approved and thanked me. No, no, I said, THANK YOU. Stupid web site.

Why would you launch a huge government-funded web site that doesn't work? I don't know. I will never know. I guess this is the government, so I'm sure the company that was contracted was horribly underpaid and the workers were horribly overworked and it was just such a big undertaking and they probably only had a week and three people on the job to develop the whole web site. (This is one of those times I wish there was a sarcasm font.)

Did I mention earlier that the old web site WORKED JUST FINE? Cause it did.

So today I logged onto the NEW AND IMPROVED WEB SITE THAT HAS BEEN UP FOR OVER A MONTH, with a sinking suspicion that maybe things were still all...hmm...what's the word?....Government-y. I logged onto my account, and guess what? They're going to debit my account again in 5 days despite the fact that they approved my forbearance last month. So I tried again to reapply and went through the whole song and dance. Unemployed? They don't care. Financial Hardship? Suck it up, they say. But after 15 minutes of cursing like a sailor who just dropped an anchor on his foot while simultaneously realizing that the jugs of rum on the ship are empty, I got somewhere. To the place I was last month. I applied for a forbearance. They thanked me for applying and said the application was approved. I removed all my bank account info in hopes that will keep their mitts off my money. I doubt any of this is going to make one damn lick of damn in 5 days when they, again, help themselves to my cash. But I understand: I have mouths to feed, but they have banks to take care of and corporations to bolster.

I am not a protester. I am not trying to dodge my loans or shirk my duties. I appreciate the fact that the government provided the means to get a wonderful education that I would not have otherwise been able to afford. But I swear, if this web site does not figure its shit out and start acting right, I...well...I don't know what I'm going to do. I'm certainly not going to draw up a sign and go protest. What would my sign say, anyway? "I WENT TO COLLEGE AND ALL I GOT WERE THE SKILLS TO PROPERLY SPELL ALL THESE WORDS. MAYBE I SHOULD'VE FOCUSED ON JOB SKILLS INSTEAD." Or maybe, "YOU PAID FOR MY EDUCATION AND NOW YOU WANT YOUR MONEY BACK? SUCK IT!"

Yeah, I think I'll just stay home and try to log onto that damn web site again. Wish me luck.

One Hour and Counting

One hour. Depending on your situation, one hour can be a short amount of time or, for instance, if you're watching a terrible movie with 60 minutes left to go before you get any sort of reprieve, then it  seems like an eternity. One hour before you have to be in class, at work, or in a meeting goes by pretty quickly. One hour before you can leave work, class, or a meeting goes by very slowly. Right now, I'm going through what feels like the longest hour of my life.

For those of you who own dogs and wonder what your little bundles of furry joy do all day while you're at work, I hope the answer is "nothing much of note" or "sleep and wait to greet you enthusiastically when you arrive home." For the dogs in my neighborhood, what they do all day is bark. At nothing. Constantly.

The dog next door has been barking now for an hour straight. He's starting to sound a bit hoarse. (Not horse, because if that was the case and he was neighing I would gladly go next door when the owners got home and propose some sort of daytime talk show circuit tour and book/endorsement deal while only asking for 20%. After all, they feed and clean up after the dog; I just discovered the talent.) But no. This dog is barking. Still barking. Barking at something only he finds stressful. He's a chihuahua mix breed, and while I must concede that I have plenty of friends who own tiny little dogs and love them very much and enjoy the shit (not literally) out of them, the barking of the littlest yappers, to my ears, is excruciating.

The houses in our neighborhood (planned community, perhaps I should say) are all packed in tightly. Our backyard butts up against the backyards of five other houses. Two of those yards contain chihuahuas. Both of those dogs bark incessantly. The good news is they usually take turns: Yesterday the neighbor directly behind us had some sort of chihuahua episode that encourage the little bugger to bark on and off for about five hours. Not exaggerating. Today, it's the chihuahua right next door...the one who is often seen roaming freely around the neighborhood and trying to hump any dog, male or female, that crosses his path. He once followed us to the park when we were taking RC's Boston Terrier to play frisbee and he did nothing but chase her backside and try to mount up. She, being a single-minded terrier, wasn't having any of it. She wanted her frisbee and only her frisbee, and she put that little Cassanova right in his place.

He's been barking for an hour plus the time it's taken me to write this. No other dogs are joining in, though the pit bull in another yard occasionally speaks once or twice. I can't tell what the pit bull is saying, but I assume it's the canine equivalent of "Dude. SHUT. UP."

Oh, now we're moving onto yelping. The dog is now yelping, and the dog lover in me feels bad because I know this is the sound of a dog who doesn't get enough exercise/attention/whatever else he needs. But the cranky pregnant woman in me wants to go leave a note on their front door that explains the next time my ears are assaulted with constant yapping I will be forced to kick the owners in the shins until bruising occurs. It's not the dog's fault it's irritating, after all.

Newsflash: The pit bull has spoken...and for the moment, all is silent. I don't know whether to celebrate by doing a jig or by taking a nap in silence. Let me think...yep, nap.