Reasearch and more research

I did some digging. I wanted answers to my questions, and I found them, finally. I found out that Thak's classes will be from 6-10 PM Monday-Thursday. He'll have Fridays off! That's so awesome! He will also have time to stop by home, get changed into his school uniform, and grab something to eat on the way to school. It takes 20 minutes to get there from here, and about 20 minutes from post to home, so there's about 20 minutes of downtime in between, which is good. The kids will at least see him for a few minutes those days. But FRIDAYS ARE OFF!!! That's great. It's also great because it means that there are only four class days a week that the Army can potentially mess up, meaning if Thak has to go to the field for two weeks, for example, he'll only use up 8 of his military days rather than 10, and since he gets 30 military excused days per calendar year, having one less day per week that will require one in the event of field training or TDY can only be a good thing. I don't know that I love the idea of him being at school until 10, but there is no choice.

This school is really expensive, too. Let's just say his two years there will cost nearly as much as we paid for my car, brand new, deluxe model, second year it was made... You can imagine, my jaw hit the floor when I saw that dollar amount. I didn't know HOW we were going to pay that, but then I did some googling. The Post-9/11 GI Bill pays ALL tuition and fees to any accredited school (including technical programs) in any amount up to that of the most expensive public university in the state. Thank goodness the VA had a chart of what that figure is for every state. For Texas, we're not even close to the max. Not even close. His GI Bill will cover this completely. Of course, that GI Bill doesn't kick in until August, so we've got to cover a few days of April, May, June, and July, and we will be reimbursed for that through the Army's Tuition Assistance Program. That will pretty much max out his yearly amount for TAP, but that's ok. The new GI Bill will kick in after that, and we still won't have to pay anything at all.

I'm glad to be getting this figured out. It's a lot, but it's going to work out. Somehow, some way, it's going to work out. The resources are there, and the ball is in our court. I'll be glad when he begins his classes, and getting them done. I'll be glad when all this is over, but I'm still really happy that he's doing it.