Financial Aid: Wyd?

This past week, our financial aid department went out to help students in high schools with the FAFSA process and to learn more about financial aid. Simply filling out and completing your FAFSA application is a very crucial, and important step in getting financial aid for college, and it is very easy for things to go wrong VERY quickly.
You also want to make sure that you take advantage and fill out your FAFSA early, especially since it now opens October 1st and not in January. (Which means, that you should probably either go fill out or renew your FAFSA like ASAP, no Rocky. After you finish reading this article though.)
It’s cute that our people in financial aid are going out and helping high school students, because I remember how confusing it was when I was applying for financial aid, and having that help definitely would have made a difference. However, I just find it funny how…they can’t help the students who are already here. Like…what about us? We still exist too. And we’re still struggling too.
The few times I have been in financial aid, I’ve been able to actually get the help I need and not have to cuss anyone out, but of course that doesn’t happen to everyone. Still, absolutely nobody wants to have to deal with financial aid because we already know, it’s going to be this extra long drawn out process that we have to mentally prepare for, when in all reality, it shouldn’t be.
Why is it that we as students have to jump through hoops for even the smallest bit of information? We have to go all around campus, or perhaps play phone tag with three different people, when nine times out ten, they (people in financial aid) have the answers sitting in front of them or they know exactly who we need to go to. Make it make sense, please.
Honestly, a lot of students would be nicer or wouldn’t be as hostile if our financial aid department was more helpful or more understanding to whatever our situation may be at the time. Like a lot of the times, we come in there trying to fix something because we weren’t told the right information about it and they look us like we’re the dumb ones. Uhm..weren’t you the ones who gave us this information in the first place?
There’s nothing wrong with them going out and helping these students because they’ll honestly need it. Like I said before, I wish I was able to get more help when I was filling out my FAFSA, and just more help understanding how everything would work. As an out-of-state student especially, things tend to get confusing and miscommunicated faster than I would like. But just as fast as things can go wrong, I need financial to be a little bit faster and help us here back at home too.