Onion headline: Financial Aid office feels surprisingly like sleazy insurance company

[gement]

I just got my revised financial aid award. It has $1666 in workstudy. And it's halfway through the quarter. And it has that much workstudy because they did not give me the appropriate form to point out that I'm not keeping my previous full-time job while in grad school when I asked them WTF was up with the size of my aid package in July. They waited until I sat in their office and stared at them in October (after the standard brushoff in the office too), because I knew something was wrong here and I wasn't moving until they told me what. At that point, they finally said, "Oh, well, if your income changed, there's this form..." And of course, by mid October all the loans have been handed out. Mind you, I have an extra Stafford Loan now. It is tasty, and will help a great deal. So that is a good thing.

But if I was going to have to get a job (which I kinda knew, but really didn't want to face in my first quarter), I wish I'd had access to the workstudy listings at the beginning of the quarter.

So I've learned this meme in Information Behavior, and that meme is "Information-Poor." A person is information-poor if prior experience has not equipped him with the tools to search for information that he needs to deal with a situation in his life. Many money-poor people are information-poor about how to find health services or format a professional resume. Many lawyers and executives are information-poor about how to raise children or take care of their own emotional health. Even if you tell them where to look, formal information can kind of slide off, because it doesn't fit in their frameworks.

I am information-poor about how to find a part-time job (no more than 10hrs/wk) on campus or near my home that doesn't suck. If I could swing $15/hr (dare I dream for more?), I would jump up and down and clap my hands. I know about all the websites where you can hunt for stuff, there's just this disconnect between knowing where to look and knowing how to do it. I may need a walkthrough. Anyone with experience, or even just moral support, who might have the time and inclination to help me with this, either in person or by phone?

For the record: I am not going to starve or lose my living space. I will not let myself flunk anything in the quest for filthy lucre. I have a line on a tutoring job at Greenlake Elementary for $10/hr, which will be fine if I can't locate something more lucrative. But I think I should try.

Comments

[eeyorerin]

My quick advice: Talk to your professors and/or the department administrative assistants about this: they might have a research project that needs an assistant, need to blow through grant money before a deadline (you would not believe how weird people's spending habits get right before the money goes away), know someone who needs data entry or transcription done (both of which you could do just fine, given your skills), or other possibilities. They know grad students are poor. It will not be a surprise that you need employment. (If it is, they had a very different grad school experience then most.)

See if any of the Writing Centers (I think UW has more than one) are hiring tutors.

Ask me specific questions if you have them.