There needs to be an overhaul in how financial aid for community colleges operates. Max 90 units and no financial aid? Excuse me, but what the hell? OK, it’s cool, I’ll just appeal, they have to understand. “Denied.” Not enough evidence of the circumstances and cannot appeal under the same reasoning for more than one semester, I was informed after I had waited from August to November for an answer.

Am I alone here? I have attempted 90 units and should have graduated in the Bakersfield College class of 2005-2006. In failed attempts and through numerous unforeseen hardships, I would withdraw, fail, and drop out of BC three times before I got my life steady enough for a moment of clarity.

I returned to the BC campus with a renewed sense of hope in 2012. I was older and wiser, and in 2013 I became a full-time student. I allowed my work to become secondary and relied heavily on financial aid to pay my bills that the job used to cover.

I was already being worked against with a probation period of academic renewals that prohibited me from getting grades lower than an “A,” because of how low my overall GPA was –and still remains— regardless of how great I do in my current semester. I could even get a 4.0 GPA and it would barely make a splash in the cumulative GPA that spans as far back as my first year attempting to attend BC in 2003. All the hard work done fruitlessly, when I was now, a year later, being told that I had hit my peak in attempted units, and therefore unable to receive financial aid. It’s the most absurd thing I ever have heard.

There needs to be a change, immediately. Colleges need to instruct the incoming freshmen better about the financial costs that the future they are working for will entail. I, the typical working-class college student, have waited tables and bartended my way through my last semesters. I am a student taking on major loans to finance myself through the three-month periods that my employment takes the back burner to my studies. The conundrum being if I don’t work, I don’t eat. Being a college student has its long hours, especially if you are trying to participate in the college experience by participating in extracurricular activities.

I have discovered that the highest point of concentration and best time for myself, personally, to learn, is during the evening. These peak hours for my brain are also peak hours for working at my job. Hours are typically only available on weekends and evenings. Without work, my rent doesn’t get paid, my books aren’t bought and I am forced to work to make money for the two, even missing class to do so. I can’t win from losing.

Who made this financial aid bylaw? Most likely, a Harvard graduate, or someone like him/her, whose parents financed their college tuition is the one who decided that 90 units is too many attempted for a community college.

The new way for financial aid cuts with students is to pay a student mid-semester or at the end of it. How will students afford this? This plagues my consciousness at all depths and personally hits home.

The financial aid departments throughout California should make it their goal to assist returning students at all cost, not put additional roadblocks in their way and impede on the student’s pocket books.

The question that remains is what are we to do? I’m tired of dropping out and failing classes because food and rent are more important. When making life decisions, financial aid is supposed to assist a student in being able to devote themselves to the school. Not all of us are buying brand new cars, Jordan’s, or new wardrobes with the funds. Some of us have a life to live that cannot be financed without the financial aid, including the school supplies one needs to attend school.