I’ve assumed many things falsely in my past-things that, one way or another, I had overheard and taken for truth: lemmings are suicidal, navy blue goes with black, and, recently, that OSAP money is for tuition. But, it appears that such narrow-minded hearsay is false, at least empirically. Who knew?
This year, the first year that I became eligible to indulge my government-loan sweet tooth, I applied and was approved for OSAP. The fine people at OSAP had, in my previous four years at U of T, decided that I had full control of my parents’ income; that I perhaps suggested what cars they buy, what entertainment they take in, how much of my tuition that they should be paying, etcetera. Unfortunately, much akin to my assumptions as they pertained to lemmings, such ideas of theirs were and are incorrect. Finally, complaining aside, I became eligible and received more than enough money to cover my current as well as outstanding fees, assuming, falsely, that my OSAP money is for tuition.
Much to my surprise, the registrar’s office informed me that outstanding tuition cannot be paid with new OSAP funding. I would have to cover the outstanding $2500-money that I do not have in my possession-before they would release my loan, which totals almost double the amount I have in outstanding tuition. For clarity’s sake, let me put the imbroglio in short: I pay old tuition now, they cover the new tuition, and then they send me a cheque for the remainder, which I may spend on hookers, cocaine, and spontaneous gambling trips to Vegas; the one thing I cannot spend the money on is tuition. How stupid of me to think otherwise; it makes perfect sense, like, say, being given chemotherapy after the faith healer has already rid you of cancer.
Considering myself a responsible, albeit misinformed, student regarding to the seductive qualities of student loans, I had awaited a much-overdue pat on the back for choosing to spend my OSAP on tuition, and not hookers and cocaine.
Perplexed, I turned to my edition of Microsoft Encarta-a veritable stronghold of corrective information-and discovered not a single entry for OSAP. Why? Well, for one of three blatantly obvious reasons: (a) that OSAP is so well run and self-inherently logical that it does not require an interminable entry in my computer’s leading encyclopedia program; (b) that the folks at Microsoft are just as perplexed as I am by a student assistance program intended to cover tuition that disallows the student being granted money to pay off his or her tuition with said money; or (c) that the folks that run OSAP had made, just like me, a false assumption: I never really needed OSAP in the first place, so why would I spend it on tuition?
