Another Trouble, Please?

Already a well-established magnet of disaster, it should come as no surprise to find tragedy struck again. If not for a wonderful professor, I would have dropped out of college.

This semester, I began happy, with full intentions of being active mentally and, for once, physically. Several of the projected courses were fitness, including yoga, pilates, ballroom dancing and weight training.

One class, however, was exotic. Brazillian jiu jitsu was fun… for the first class. The second class, though, is when everything went south.

Here's where I should brag about how my injury happened while I flipped a 5,000-pound gorilla-ogre over my head, but the depressing truth is that no one was near me and I was only practicing falling down.

My sixth or seventh fall was accompanied by mind-numbing pain.

Odd.

I got up and did two more, each progressively more painful. Then I stood up, smiled at the class and promptly passed out.

Three trainers, four policemen, three nurses, two doctors and two days later, I had codeine, steroids and a cane with a prognosis of a small inguinal hernia with an accompanying muscle strain and tear, for which the recovery time was estimated to be two months.

The fitness classes had to be dropped. Missing two months of class would mean automatic failure. Another of my classes came immediately after an important subject. The classroom was on the other end of campus, but I was moving terribly slow.

This dropped me down to 9 credit hours. I went to the Financial Aid office in Lawshe, where they told me regardless of the source of my malady, even a class; I would lose my full-ride Chancellor's Scholarship if I did not complete 12 credit hours. I asked if an exception could be made, but nothing could be done.

To my great relief, through a friend, a professor heard my story and offered her class. Part of my problem was fixed. Through a trip to Phoenix for the Associated Collegiate Press conference, I am mostly better.

The issue here is whether or not the University would be justified in removing a student's full-ride scholarship because of conditions created in class. Does the University simply look for a way to opt-out of such obligations? As Chancellor's Scholar, I am supposed to be the prized student; only to find my attendance here means nothing.

Why is our University so brazenly uncaring toward students they are most outwardly supportive of? What exactly is our University after?