Tie Me Up In Red Tape

"and stick a tag that says 'ANNOYED' on it" is how the rest of the title should read...

So I'm not sure if I've blogged about this yet but I've decided to get my MBA when I graduate. I'm getting it here at Harding so the plan is to come home for the summer as usual, then come back in the fall and get an apartment and take my MBA (approx a year and a half.) It'll be cool cuz Matt is staying here too to work for Public Safety for another year or two so I'll still get to see him on a regular basis. I have also decided to do the GA program. You work 20 hrs/week in an office here on campus and instead of a paycheck you get 3000/semester towards tuition. I figure it's a pretty sweet deal. I have already applied for the GA program and apparently won't hear back until late spring for an interview. I'm in the process of applying for the MBA stuff right now. Dr. Frazier has already agreed to give me a recommendation so I dropped off the form to him the other day. Now I just need one more. I'm thinking Dr. Sloan but I still need to talk to him... Anyways...

So I realize that if I'm going to work here in the US that I'm gonna need my SSN. I have dual citizenship but we left the States when I was 2 and therefore I never had a need for a SSN for working purposes or anything. So I look on their website for an application and it says if you're over 12 and applying for the first time you have to do it in person at one of their offices (which I was surprised to find out there is one in Searcy!). So I get Mom to mail me my birth certificate, fill out the form and take it and my BC to the SSN office one afternoon before break. They were a little confused at first about me being a dual citizen but once they figured that out they thought they could process everything using my American BC and my Canadian passport. Then they tell me that they need a "state-issued" BC and mine was "hospital-issued". They tell me to get a state-issued one and bring it back and they can process everything I need for my SSN. A little discouraged, I go back to my room and look up the NY state dept of health's website and figure out how I'm supposed to do this. My options were pay $30 for regular mail and they will process within 6-8 weeks of them receiving it. No thanks. Next I could pay $45 for "priority handling" which was still regular mail but they would process it within 2-3 weeks of them receiving it. My 3rd option was pay $53 to do it online and they would process within 5-7 business days! So I talk to Mom and ask her if I can do it online and put it on the credit card. After she said I could, I went online and had everything filled out except for the last step and then it was like "to verify your identity and protect you from identity theft, please input your DOB and SSN here". I was like WHAT?? The whole reason I'm applying for this stupid BC is to get my SSN!! So I click the help tab and none of the FAQ's answer my problem so I click "ask us a question". I send them an email explaining my situation and then have to wait to hear back from them. I hear back right away saying "thank you for your request. we will process it within the next 3 business days". Fortunately a guy replied the next morning saying that I needed to fax or phone it in instead and attached the fax form. I filled it out and today I used Nik's scanner instead of photocopying my passport. I gave the forms to Matt and he said he would fax them for me when he's at work tomorrow so I don't have to pay for it.

So now I wait. The shipping address had to match the billing address which is my home address so I'm hoping that they send my BC to my house while I'm home over break or else Mom is gonna have to mail it to me AGAIN. Then I have to go to the SSN office and wait for that to be processed. Oh how I love red tape! Luckily the lady in charge of the GA program said I can submit my application w/o the SSN as long as they have that info before I start working in the fall. It better be processed by then!!

So I just realized all of my paragraphs started with "so". Anyways, my contacts are drying out so I'm going to take them out and maybe go to bed early...