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<p>Spoken like someone who has money ;)</p>
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<p>I agree, Flossy.</p>
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<p>No, Bay. What makes me mad is your suggestion that a kid who does not NEED to work and presumably has a wider range of job opportunities (meaning, perhaps, access to a car or a network that could lead to PT work) is more entitled to campus jobs than poor kids who not just want but NEED them to get their aid packages. Do you know how it works? When a student receives a financial-aid package, it almost always includes compensation from a work-study job as part of that package. So colleges offer those positions FIRST to FA kids. My son, not knowing this, tried to get a campus job at his LAC but was told that he couldn’t because he was already receiving merit aid and they needed to reserve those positions for kids receiving FA. I am not sure all colleges work this way but that has left him in the position of having a tough time finding a job during the school year since he doesn’t have a car and there are not many places to work in walking distance. Thankfully he has a great, decent-paying warehouse job that gives him long (12-hour) shifts during the summer and holiday breaks, and he stockpiles what he needs to get him through the school year.</p>
<p>OH Mom- my husband and I were at the dump the other day, w our old pick-up truck and i had on an old sweatshirt and a pair of ratty jeans w work boots. We were slinging trash bags into the dumpster when a women came up to me and exclaimed " I’ve lost my keys down the garbage chute!" I , wisely , turned to my spouse and said " honey, can you help this lady find her keys?" ( cause there was no way I was digging in that ) and delegating crappy jobs is sub - specialty of mine. Anyway, the lady looks at me and says" oh, you don’t work here?" And got very embarrassed. What she didn’t get what I really didn’t care about being mistaken for the landfill attendant. My self worth is strong enough that it didn’t bother me. My husband and I still tell that story at dinner parties</p>
<p>A bit of a threadjack, but I’ve gotten some great stuff at the dump swap off. My favorite is a volume of the collected works of Shakespeare which appears to have belonged to a Wellesley College professor. It’s filled with the most fascinating notes!</p>
<p>I can top that( sorta) - our dump has been featured in the NYT.lol</p>
<p>sally
My D didn’t have a car to help with the job search either. But I guess since she is rich, you would have preferred she get a car for her job and then you could get mad that she has a car at college.</p>
<p>Now you’re just being ridiculous, Bay.</p>
<p>C’mon Bay, hyperbole doesn’t help your point.</p>
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<p>My thoughts exactly.</p>
<p>I went to college as a full pay student. I had to work during the summer if I wanted any extras…my parents did well financially but there were 7 of us with a SAHM. I was annoyed by the FA students who didn’t get summer jobs because it would lower their FA package. So I totally get where some posters are coming from.</p>
<p>Fast forward. I have a child who is receiving a really expensive education that we cannot afford. He worked very hard and earned it. His college feels he has something to contribute to society and has given him a very generous FA package. He is still taking out loans (although manageable) and using summer work to supplement FA.</p>
<p>what he knows: he is not from a wealthy family, sorry but you’re good looking…haha, other kids can afford to go out to nice restaurants, you can’t,…but your good at sports, other kids can go to awesome places for vacations, you can’t afford that but you grew up in an amazing place and get to come home on holidays,…on and on…no whining…if you want the things you don’t have then work really hard and make them a priority in your life. There is no being jealous, just a realization that there are sacrifices.</p>
<p>As far as people that are doing worse than us…DH and I have always stressed compassion, not judgement. It is not worth it, in our opinion, to waste time on what, “they’re getting” and I’m not.</p>
<p>I would imagine that for most students without money it’s not any one event that makes them feel out of step with their middle and upper income peers, but the accumulation of such events. No one ever died from not being able to join their friends for a slice of pizza, but when every time your friends start talking about doing something together you have to worry about whether you’ll have to choose between joining them and doing your laundry for the week it must get tiresome.</p>
<p>That’s exactly what I have been trying to say, Sue. It’s the accumulation of 18+ years of struggling, worrying, making do. Simply putting kids like that in an environment that is so different from what they have known–and where some think they should be constantly grateful, even when it’s hard–does not magically change them into people who are just like everyone else. They still know it is different, and it is a challenge every day.</p>
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<p>What you don’t seem to “get” apparently is that all your strong self worth is a lot more easy to come by when you are a member of the 1%. I’m sure everyone at the dinner parties is greatly amused by your anecdote but something tells me that they won’t get why the woman who made the mistake was embarrassed either.</p>
<p>Ahhhh… The question is, would CheekyMonkey invite the real landfill attendant to her dinner party? Would she take the time to get to know her? Or is she just a funny story?</p>
<p>Maybe she is the mother of a Harvard freshman. Would that make a difference?</p>
<p>sally305-
I’m less worried about the message that kids receiving a pricey education should be grateful than I am that gratitude and struggle are mutually exclusive. It’s possible to be very grateful for something and still find it difficult to the point of unmanageability.</p>
<p>“sporting events should be ‘free’ for financial aid students”</p>
<p>Stanford football is free to “ALL” students including all types of graduate students.</p>
<p>Sporting and other school sponsored events (concerts, exhibits, etc) should be free for all students, I think. Included in activity fees or whatever.</p>
<p>“should be free for all students”</p>
<p>Not everywhere. A freshman at UTexas told me he bought season tickets at a student discount.</p>
<p><em>should be</em>, not <em>are</em>.</p>