Ok, first of all, wow. My mom needs to close out before leaving the computer for the night. It appears I’m the son she inquired about. I am her oldest. So, after reading this, I figure I’ll post my perspective on this.
I can tell that she’s kind of been taken through the ringer on this, so I’ll try to add some clarifications. My family isn’t wealthy. My dad was a marine, and does get some retirement benefits. After spending 5 or 6 years working a full time job at a plumbing store and a part-time job at the liquor store, while my mother was working on her masters, he got taken on by BNSF a couple years ago. My mother is a professor in name only. She works as an adjunct at UND and Maryland, but she doesn’t get employee benefits. After my dad’s furloughs, and my mother’s student loans, we’re finally getting on our feet financially. This is what they have told me, and they’ve always been open about finances.
So, now there’s me. Quite frankly, after reading this, I feel somewhat betrayed. It was never my intention to go to a top tier school. Ever. But I spent my entire junior year researching schools, trying to find one I liked, that wasn’t insanely expensive (I’m surprised my mother remembered that exchange with grandma), and I literally came up with only Minnesota on my final list. I’ve done various odd jobs (working for a friend’s family on a bison ranch, shoveling poop), a few hundred volunteer hours, decent grades, taking the most challenging classes my tiny high school offered, and I worked my ass off with an ACT booklet, to get that disappointing 30, twice.
All of that was so I could get out. And go to a school like Minnesota. An excellent school, where intelligence doesn’t only mean “common sense,” enjoy fall Saturdays watching a sport I love, in an atmosphere I want to be a part of, meet a girl who’s not an idiot or ugly, get a good degree, and finally not feel left out of America, living where there’s two people per square mile. (Seriously, I do not feel like a normal American. I might be white, but I’m too liberal to be a redneck, and too rural to relate to pop culture.)
And after reading this whole thread, it sucks to not have money. My mother cares. She just doesn’t have the means to help. We ran those EFCs, and it’s just not feasible. We talked about work-study, and getting hired somewhere where they’ll offer tuition reimbursement. But simply put, debt (and lots of it) might be my reality.
And to you people say commuting to community college is an option. The nearest one is a solid 63 miles away. It might be my best option to just give up, move to a tiny town in the mountains of Montana, open a pizza place, coach high school football, and do that for 60 years. That’s the real dream there.
God, I’m screwed.
Hi, mom. I hope this explains a lot when you read this.