In the military, I learned to expect screw-ups, especially when it came to money. So maybe the Department of Veterans Affairs is just trying to ease my transition to civilian life by doing things the military way in its handling of Post 9/11 GI Bill education benefits.

Student veterans began applying for education benefits in May, and we were supposed to have our tuition paid and receive our housing and book stipends in August. That didn't happen.

Instead, more than two months into the school year, most of us have received nothing, although the VA is graciously offering to advance us emergency checks of up to $3,000 to ease the economic burden of not yet receiving the money we were promised.

Along with health care, job experience and a steady paycheck, the GI Bill was one of my primary reasons for joining the Army in 2004. I went into the military -- and spent a year in Kirkuk province in northern Iraq -- with the express intention of pursuing graduate studies when my contract was up. Truth be told, I wouldn't be writing this column right now, as a student at the University of California, Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism, were it not for the GI Bill. Or, at least, for the promise of the GI Bill.

At this rate, it will take longer for the VA to get me my education benefits than it took for the Army to turn me into a soldier.

Why can't student vets get the money we were promised back when the Post 9/11 GI Bill was signed in July 2008? According to Paul Sherbo, a VA spokesman, the department has been overwhelmed with new applications and the backlog has caused massive delays.

By the VA's own count, more than a quarter of a million education claims have been filed by eligible veterans since May 1, and about 70 percent of those have been processed.

While this might sound great, let's not confuse processing with disbursement of funds. As of the first week in October, despite having about 900 employees working overtime to process claims, the VA had distributed only 27,000 payments for tuition or for living and book stipends.

In other words, almost 200,000 veterans hadn't received a dollar.

No one seems to be talking about the interest that's been accruing on the education loans some veterans were forced to take out while waiting for their GI Bill money. I doubt the VA will pay it. I myself have taken out almost $16,000 in education loans. Most universities require a student to pay tuition and fees up front, and turning in an IOU from Uncle Sam doesn't quite do the trick.

When I received my first tuition bill in August and realized the VA had not yet paid for my tuition and fees (nor my book and living stipends), I frantically called the financial aid office trying to figure out what to do. After a handful of calls, a financial aid representative reassured me that the loans I qualified for (and would now have to take out) would cover enough of the tuition so that I wouldn't be kicked out of school or be charged a late-payment fee.

UC Berkeley's VA representative, Michael Cooper, couldn't provide me with any further guidance. Once he submitted my paperwork to the VA, he said, it was out of his control, and he hasn't received so much as an automated e-mail from them since.

At UC San Diego, Vonda Garcia, the associate director of financial aid, said her office hasn't heard anything from the VA about the status of their students' GI Bill money or details about the emergency checks. In the meantime, her counselors are discouraging veterans from applying for the emergency payments and are going out of their way to find money for them through the university.

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