Mo' money, mo' problems

For a few of the job applications I've filled out recently, I've had to include my college GPA. One even asked for a year-by-year GPA, which meant I checked out my transcript for the first time in a while. I was remarkably consistent in college--I had a cumulative 3.89 GPA, yet never had a semester with a 4.0. It reminds me of the time I took Julie Camp to the Christmas Dance in high school. We went bowling before the dance, and Julie got a 79 without a single spare or strike. Now that's consistency.

My lowest GPA for a semester was 3.64, due mainly to the C+ I "achieved" in my Old Testament class--my worst grade ever at any level. The C+ was my fault, though at the time I blamed my professor. He made awful jokes, all the time, the same ones over and over again (like calling the fourth book of Moses "Leave it to cuss," or talking about how grateful he was for the Book of Ruth, because "it would be a shame to be Ruthless"). I've made my share of bad jokes before, but I'm usually aware that they're bad, and I haven't been a serial joke-repeater since my childhood "Why did the fishermen go fishing?" days.

Even worse, he gave a quiz every day, and then we graded our own quizzes in class. That means I'd have to suffer through "if I put [something vaguely related], can I get half credit?" types of questions every time. This process took at least 15 minutes in each class, and since we only had two 50-minute sessions a week to begin with to cover about 800 pages of OT curriculum, and since it was an 8 AM class, I gave in to my frustration and skipped almost half of the classes. Since I wasn't there to take the quizzes, my grade slipped down past the Bs.

For my first few years of college, I had a grade-based full tuition scholarship, which I got one year at a time, and then it would be renewed if my grades were good enough. My grades, as stated above, were good, but so were my classmates' (Communications is a pretty easy major, I'll readily admit that), and that fall my GPA was one-hundredth of a point below the cutoff for full tuition, and I got a half tuition scholarship instead.

So, my laziness or stubbornness or whatever you want to call it in relation to my Old Testament class cost me about $1600 (BYU is remarkably cheap compared to other schools, isn't it?). I ended up receiving a departmental scholarship that covered the rest of my tuition, but I probably would've got that anyway, and could've used that money for any number of other things. Pretty frustrating, and I only have myself to blame.

More recently, I've spent money that I didn't have to, and I really wish I had it back. About a fortnight ago, I finally gave up after my fifth try to get my money back from DHL brought me to the same dead end. Back in August when I moved back to New York, I shipped some boxes to myself. DHL sent them overnight instead of ground, a total difference of more than $500 for the four boxes. They haven't been pleasant to deal with, and even if I had the option I wouldn't give them my business again.

Back in September, I filled a prescription for Flomax, since after my surgery I was having bathroom problems and had to be catheterized. Turns out I'm just slow at recovering from anesthesia, and if we had waited just a little longer I probably would've been fine, and wouldn't have had to pay $110 for 30-40 pills, of which I took four. If you know someone who uses Flomax, I'd be happy to sell the rest of my stash at a discounted rate.

Finally, earlier this month, I left my apartment without my Metro card, probably the first time I've ever done that. So I bought a new card and put about $10 on it, which technically isn't a loss since I can still use it, but it was aggravating when I next tried using my regular card and saw that the month was up and it was time to buy a new unlimited monthly pass anyway.

At least I got my tax refund last week. I ended up paying less than $100 combined income tax for state and federal. Not bad. I've used this website to do my taxes the last few years. It's not for everyone--if you made a lot of money (like more than $60,000--that's a lot to me), or have W2's from more than one state, then you can't use it. But if you qualify, they'll file your federal for free, and your state for just $10 (or, obviously, you can file your state return for free on your own). It's a pretty good deal, and despite the evidence given above, I usually try to take good care of my money.