Parentheses

My mood has gone to Hell and back during the weekend (no, it's not PMS). 

It's time to start planning the return to Lund. The first thing was to find somewhere to stay. Mom said that I could move back home, you know, compensate for being gone for so long. It has some advantages for sure, like no rent, free food that someone else is cocking. The disadvantage: it's the end of the world. It takes one hour to get to Lund, commuting is a pain, there would be no social life and as a 23-year old it's a matter of principle to have your own home.

So I was looking for housing via AF Bostäder. I found a pretty cheap dorm room in Parentesen (the Parenthesis) with move-in-date in July. The summer is free so I have to pay for July because it's the first month, but not August, and in September all the new students get prioritized. It was the perfect deal for me. Forty other people had tried to book the room, but I'd been three years in the queue and booked it 10 minutes before the time went out. Nice, I thought. Well, hold your horses. The rules are that if you book you use your place in the queue, and if you don't get the contract you don't get your place back. To sign the contract I needed to provide three documents. The transcript, registration info and a photo copy of my student's nation card. To get a nation card you have to pay a fee every semester. The rules changed while I've been abroad and instead of one bill where you pay for all the student fees, there's a separate bill for the nation fee now. So, after calling my brother, my mother, they are the ones opening my mail and paying my bill while I'm abroad, and looking into my bank account I realized that I hadn't payed that fee. Fuck. So I begged/ordered my brother, the Pirate, who was in the middle of writing a big paper (B-uppsats) to go to the nation and get a bill and pay for it. I emailed my transcript and registration info and explained the situation.

I got a not-very-polite answer that there was missing units for the fall and that I had to present a paper proving that I had passed 15hp during the fall, that is half time studies. I had until Monday to present this paper. Panic, panic, panic, I don't have a paper like that! With this short time I could only get an Unofficial Transcript from UCSB. Crossing my fingers that it would work, I attached it with a list of contact information to offices that could prove that I studied here. I was so nervous, I begged to nameless gods, cold sweat running down my back, wishing, hoping that they would accept it.

10 minutes later I got an answer. Since you're an exchange student you get excepted from the rules, you don't have to have any units registered or be a member of a nation, if you want the exception we can sign the contract immediately. They had probably not looked at the registration info, just the transcript. Yeah, I want that exception! Now the contract is signed. I will move to Parentesen. And now I've payed the nation fee of 200 SEK for nothing. I'm so happy it worked out.