There's no pleasing CSN

There are a lot of people complaining about CSN and how they seem to be able to fuck things up just for the sake of doing so. I have never really been one of those people. My dealings with CSN have for the most part gone quite smoothly. The few bumps in the road have been fairly swiftly taken care of by understanding and lovely people at their helpdesk.

Until this last semester...

I can understand that things can get messed up because you misunderstand what box to check or what forms to fill out and you don’t take the time to ask and make sure. But this mess started with very specific instructions on how to fill out the forms so we would get the grants for the summer weeks. And believe me, they were VERY specific orders from our CSN liaison in Lund. Everyone in our class filled them out exactly the same way... it ended up with half of us being granted the money, a quarter denied them all together and a quarter of us denied it until we sent in another form and basically redid the whole application...

Right there you might get that: “Waaaaait a minute”-feeling…

Well, we who got denied got the explanation that the way we had applied for the summer weeks was WRONG, so completely and utterly wrong that the instructions could not possibly have come from them...

So we sighed and complied with these new terms and applied again.

Now when doing so I applied for this semester as well and around Christmas I got the form which the school has to sign to confirm I'm there and doing what I'm supposed to. I immediately realised I would loose it before school started but I tried to be good and put it in one of those "I'll know I put it here"-places. Naturally it was gone when school started.

So I called CSN and asked if I could have another one and got the answer "No, you stupidhead... now you have to apply for that semester all over again... duh!" Well... that was the consensus of the conversation anyway. So I sighed and waited for the new forms which I filled out, got it signed by the school and sent back... Now almost a month later I get a note saying I'm denied the grant because I have already sought for this semester and got a verdict for that... which is to say I'm supposed to get the grant as soon as I've sent them the form confirming I'm at school and doing well... which I have to get another one, but can't until I've reapplied... which I can't do because they have already given the thumbs up.... Gah!!!

Do these people talk to eachother? Do they even follow the same rules?
There's just no pleasing them...