Malone

             Malone started back up in school the second week of September. Since school has started, Malone has had to once again balance his time more with schoolwork, his job, and spending time with me and our little pups. With careful consideration and countless hours of frustration,  we've figured out a Grad Plan and we're hoping to get him graduated by July 2013. He'll have to go year round to finally get done, which will require him getting on Fast Grad. Fast Grad allows students to take classes full time all year around as opposed to just 2 semesters a year. Recently, Malone has struggled trying to get the school to accept his Grad Plan and let him be on fast track because he's over on his credits. At BYU-I they're all about squeezing as many students in as possible and then pushing them out as soon as possible. They are very strict about how many credits you accumulate and once you get to a certain amount, (which is 120 I think) they practically force you to graduate. They'll give you about 20 more credits leniency, but Malone will be 6 credits over that when he graduates. So the school was having a cow about it of course. Sometimes the way BYU-I handles things frustrates us both, but we manage. Even though it was a pain figuring all that out, Malone was accepted for Fast Grad!! Yay!! The only problem now is trying to help Malone figure out a schedule with his classes he needs to graduate. Next semester is going to be a problem because many of the classes he needs gets in the way of his work schedule. Right now we're not sure how he's going to be able to do both. The whole reason Malone has been working 30 hours a week is because we get our health insurance through his job, which has been a huge blessing since Malone has met our deductible with his knee surgery this year. We'll be losing part of our income and our health insurance if he doesn't work. Not to mention, the grant Malone got this year was tiny (it didn't even cover tuition), we aren't sure how we're going to pay for Malone's last two semesters of school.
      Then, just a week ago, I was asked to work more hours for my Broulims job. I was able to stop working at Mobley's on Wednesdays and work at the accounting office instead (which is good because Broulim's pays more and they give raises!). I was excited because not only does that help a little with our income, but it's one step closer to me being eligable for benefits, which would allow Malone to either work less hours or quit completely. I have to have an average of 30 hours for 12 weeks in order to qualify and I'll be about 24 with just the accounting and  about 3.5 hours average doing posters. Not quite enough right now, but there's potential. I just need one more day during the week doing accounting and that'll be enough. We'll just have to see how things pan out and hope for the best.