Trying not to cry

I am not usually this emotional, or this caught up in the details of the bureaucracy of my university. But today it just feels like they're kicking me while I'm down.

I had 2 jobs lined up for this fall. I lost one earlier this week due to a bureaucratic mistake.

The second one was with the feminist studies institute. I was supposed to be paid $6,000 for a year-long internship. But whoops, they messed, did they say $6,000? They meant $1,200. I know, it's not a life-changing difference and we'll just dig a little deeper into debt in the spring, but it's hard to keep a straight face when they just 'don't understand' why I'm so upset. I had earmarked all of that money for childcare in the spring. It may not be enough for full-time daycare, but it's a lot of hours of ad-hoc babysitting or sharing somebody else's nanny. And now I don't have it, and it's way too late to find an interesting, flexible job for the fall and I really don't want to even consider a second job in the spring. And it just all-round sucks because this is one of the few organizations I expected to understand the situation and did not get all the details of my job offer in writing.

I guess I shouldn't be that surprised that it's the feminist institute that is making my life hell in the spring. All idealistic organizations at universities tend to be poorly administered. It's just that a nice, polite apology for screwing me over would have made me feel so much better. That, or telling me sometime before September 9th that they basically can't pay me.

ps - I usually try not to post about my program because it is such a small program that basically any detail might give away exactly what I do and where and I don't want my colleagues to find it. But this kind-of gets to me as a political issue more than an academic one. JD keeps talking about how I would have legal rights about all of these 'miscommunications' if I worked outside of academia.