<p>Today I dropped off the all the forms that D’s college requires be sent to the IDOC clearing house: copies of tax returns, W-2’s, etc. For. The. Last. Time. Ever. (Assuming they will not be needed for grad school. Even so, she may be taking a couple of gap years or pursuing graduate education abroad, which while it still has to be paid for, will probably have a different set of hoops.)</p>
<p>Anyway, I’m going to celebrate. Possibly by just sitting around and doing nothing except occasionally glancing at my file copy of the completed paperwork.</p>
<p>Just think, some little old gray-haired lady in the depths of the financial aid filing warehouse knows your deepest, darkest secrets… congrats on being done with all that “stuff”.</p>
<p>I will be relating to this hopefully tonight when I finish the CSS and mail the tax returns and other forms. Can anyone explain to me how our EFC went up from last year while our income has gone down?</p>
<p>TheDad - congratulations. We are happy to - we hope - be done for this year, and that is a relief as well. We just filed an appeal with one of D’s schools. It seemed like the tax / financial aid process was never going to end. My H doesn’t want to see another form any time soon. It is now out of our hands.</p>
<p>Yay for you, theDad! We have a LOOOONG ways to go. Third kid (of five) starting college this fall). The youngest is eight. Ack, years and years of filling out forms left to go . . . But, hey, I’ll celebrate with you. What a nice position to be in!</p>
<p>Sigh. We finished ours two months ago, which we thought necessary because of wife’s illness. The financial aid gods have been so good to us with D1, I almost feel like it is way over the line to be praying to them for D2.</p>
<p>But we will anyway. I already have the coconut, and the odd number of overripe fruit for the altar. ;)</p>
<p>Elle, likewise. Time flies. And I take it as humorous that the hurdles that seemed so overwhelming at the time have dwindled to insignificance even as new hurdles begin to loom ever larger. That’s life, I guess. To quote old HHH, I’m just pleased as punch that her undergrad has worked out so well. And even though there are only a little over two chapters [semesters] left, there are some extremely interesting potential developments that will have me watching intently all the way to the finish line. While the whole question of grad school vs. law school vs. a gap year or two working and in what sequence gets sorted out. I believe in evolution…my D is doing <em>much</em> better than I did at perceiving and navigating choices. (If she’s gotten a boost from standing upon the shoulders of my experiences, hey, it’s all good…that’s what one does for one’s children.)</p>
<p>Binx, I’m with your H.</p>
<p>Mstee & Chedva, sometimes I feel guilty having to deal with only one. But reading posts like yours makes it guilt that I can live with. With the “R” word only 10-15 years away, I need to kick up my income anyway and doing so with FinAid in the works would be injurious to my mental outlook.</p>
<p>Mini, that doesn’t sound terribly, umm…Orthodox.</p>
<p>Soozie, amen about paying the loans off. I already note how the balance on the first year’s loan has decreased noticeably.</p>
<p>Back in 1981, my wife and I were in Mumbai (at that time it was still Bombay) visiting two friends of ours - a Hindu engineer married to his Catholic wife. We were staying at the home of his sister. On Sunday morning, we asked where Jo (the wife) was, and his sister-in-law said she had gone to the church nearby.</p>
<p>“Oh, what church is that?” I asked.</p>
<p>“Our Lady of the Dollars,” she replied.</p>
<p>My wife and I looked at each other. “You mean “Our Lady of Dolores” - of Sorrows.”</p>
<p>“Why would anyone worship the Goddess of Sorrows,” she looked at us uncomprehendingly. “I thought it must be the Catholic version of Lakshmi.”</p>
<p>Wish we were in your shoes–about the D’s future.</p>
<p>Our D has had an absolutely wonderful college experience. But graduation looms and she is COMPLETELY clueless about where she wants the future road to lie. On the negative side, she doesn’t know what she wants to do. On the plus side (she assures me), she has developed a long list of things she DOESN’T want to do. </p>
<p>Sometimes I wish I could fast forward into her future to be assured that all will work out well.</p>
<p>And we all thought college admissions was a big thing to go through, lol. This sort of stuff just never ends with kids, does it? Summer jobs, internships, grad school admissions, careers, casting (in one of my kid’s instances), and on and on. It is always something!</p>
<p>LMNOP: I’m right there with you. I’ve got both kids graduating. My son has lined up a great job (but feels he’s underachieving because his friends are making more money–but none of his friends have their scuba-diving paid for as part of their job, so…) but my daughter is having a rough time with the transition (she’s always had a rough time with transitions). She’s sure about exactly two things: she wants to stay in Portland (OR) and she does NOT want to work for us (we actually own a business in Portland, and she’s worked for us two summers).</p>
<p>TheDad, I also have only one - my comment about only having to do one set of forms had to do with the 8 schools she applied to. I don’t know if I would survive if I had to do this all over again with another!</p>
<p>Congrats, TheDad! I guess we are in the same boat with DD. (Class of '08), This is the last (undergrad) financial aid form we ever fill out for her. I guess if she decides to go to grad school she’ll be filling in the forms herself. But we have 3 more years of undergrad forms for DS - he’ll be a new frosh in August. :eek:</p>
<p>Mini: my understanding of Hindu theology would say that Lakshmi is quite possibly the goddess of financial aid but that you have to worry very much about which eye she views you with. Perhaps I was misinformed…after all, I’m the type to go to Casablanca for the waters.</p>
(Avoid Durga at all costs, unless your kid goes to Princeton.)</p>![http://www.vedicfuture.com/images/lakshmi.jpg[/url]](http://www.vedicfuture.com/images/lakshmi.jpg%5B/url%5D){kind=link}
