Well I finally did it. My master student loan document has been submitted, processed, and approved. Finally, I will be able to receive my student loan.

Ten business days from now.

I wish I could say that I am surprised, but I am not. This whole ridiculous circus has been one face-palming disaster after the next, and by now, I am completely numb to it. I have surrendered to the will of bureaucracy and will plod through however much senseless labyrinth they put before me until they deem me worthy, like a Kafka protagonist.

But with better results, one hopex.

The important thing is, it is entirely out of my hands now. My role is complete. All I need do is wait, and while I have done a lot of that lately and it caused me a lot of tension, it is a lot easier to wait when the matter is beyond your control.

So now I am as serene as a cloud. It will happens when it happens.

The only part that really bugs me is that it means a further delay in getting my freaking textbooks. I am starting to wonder if I should bother. We will be well into November when the money comes through. And I got 83 percent on two exams without them.

Took another one today, this one for Ideology and Politics. I think I did okay, I know I got some of the “match the quote to the philosopher” questions wrong due to my well established trouble with names. But I know I nailed the “define five of these words” section, and I am pretty sure I did a good job on the essay question, despite it throwing me for a loop at first.

See, when I first read the question I thought it was asking how capitalism enabled liberal political reforms, and I know tons about that. I could talk about mercantilism, the rise in currencies in both size and role, how the free flow ofnbsp; capital enabled the middle class to grow exponentially, how the flow if capital is the flowof power, and so forth and so on ad nauseum.

But no, the question was how liberal political reform enabled the rise of capitalism, and that was… harder. That, for me, was flipping the telescope around and looking through the other end, and it took some doing to adjust to it. I had never thought of it from that POV before. I guess I had, without knowing it, thought of capitalism as the dog wagging the tail of politics.

But of course, it is not that simple. The relationship between economic and political reform is far too intimate for such a simplistic directionality. The two forms of reform enabled one another. It is meaningless to say one led the other exclusively.

So I had to do some mental heavy lifting. But I got my three points to support the thesis, and did my best to relate them to ideas we had covered in class. This, despite the fact that while we have talked a lot about politics in class, we have talked very little about economics.

So in a way, the question was unfair. I have a very deep feeling that the average grade on that essay will be quite low. I was lucky in that I brought it a lot of knowledge (42 years worth) into the exam. But for the kids who only have what we learned in class to go on, it is going to be a total brick wall. I would not be surprised if the prof ends up facing the angry buzz of a nest of helicopter parents over it.

I could be wrong.

More on this when I get home.

(—)

Home now. I could have blogged while I was waiting for the bus, but I decided to give my brain a rest and just watch the traffic go by with mind and eyes unfocused.

Today involved a lot of walking around. I went to the post office before I went to school, void check and picture ID in hand, only to be told I needed a third thing, which was some way of proving that the SIN on the document was my SIN.

So, either a SIN card, last year’s tax return (who carries that around?), or some form I got from some place called Services Canada at Ackroyd and Westminster. I didn’t have the first two.

Fine, I thought. I will come back after class and go to this Services place I’ve never heard of.

So I finish my exam at around 3:30 pm, catch the bus to end up at 3 Road and Westminster Highway just before four, and go looking for this government building that was supposedly at Ackroyd and Westminster.

Nope. It was actually at Ackroyd and Buswell. But the nice gal at the Post Office gave me the nearest MAJOR intersection, so I will cut her some slack.

So I get to the Services building (awesome place, totally antique, beige and clear black plastic style) and take the elevator to the third floor (awesome elevator too), and ask the nice people at Passport Canada which way to Services Canada.

They said A) thataway but also B) it had closed at 4 pm, which was like five minutes ago.

That is, I suppose, where things turned Kafka-esque.

Luckily, by that point, I had figured out that I actually did have my SIN card. It’s very old and fragile, but it has my SIN and my name on it, and that was what the Post Office needed : proof that my SIN did indeed belong to Michael Bertrand.

So I wandered over to the Post Office, and sure enough, everything went through this time.

I was tempted to just give up, have dinner at White Spot, and then go home and deal with it tomorrow. But I am proud of myself for persevering and getting it done today, and only then rewarding myself with White Spot.

So all in all, it’s been a pretty good day.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.