I was raised to believe that if you do good, good things will happen. I neglected relationships and focused entirely on schooling. Straight-A student, practically never missed a day. I worked for a year at a job paying less than $10 an hour while living in a toxic environment because it was cheaper and by the end I had a bit over $8,000 in savings from working while balancing other aspects of my life.
Then I wound up at a shitty abusive job which refused to pay for drive time and forced us to drive places on days we said we weren't available while I was in college and before I knew it I had $4k left. Then the pandemic hit and my account dropped to under $1k.
For the first time ever I was fired from a job recently, because I was promised 2 weeks of training and instead I was given only 3 days of training and then they had me stay late doing 8-10 hour shifts of doing dishes. They let me go and said I “looked miserable” and “wasn't getting along with the team.” What team? All I was doing was dishes!
But that isn't why I'm writing this. I'm writing this because I was a straight-A student who neglected friends in the past to make sure my homework was turned in early, and now with my perfect GPA I was told that the cheapest college in my state is willing to give me $6k in scholarships. Tuition is over $12k and living on campus plus food nearly doubles that. I have spent my life being the perfect angel of a student and they are giving me a 25% off coupon. They expect nearly $40,000 for two years from me AFTER scholarships. This is especially bad since I was planning to attend post-grad after.
Right now I have less than $200 in my account because of rich people driving up rent costs and I can't work full-time because of college. So realistically I would have $200 a month for things other than essential bills if I WAS working. I can't think about college with this hanging over me, especially when I have been job-hunting for a week and a half and not heard back. So congratulations America. You have made me not care about college. I have a final exam later and my grade in the class is good enough that I could tank it and still get a C in the class, so I don't care. I can't care. You have ripped me off, wasted my money with exorbitant bills, and after most of my life of busting my ass, you're giving me pennies in scholarship money compared to the work I put in. And this guy who scored nearly perfectly on parts of the ACT gets to spend his time being told that he isn't good at rolling pizza dough or looks too sad while doing dishes for eight hours at a time. Congratulations.