Over Worked, Under Paid, and Still in Debt.

To put it bluntly: my parents sucked. They were never really ones to support me financially or emotionally. This is the major reason why I consider leaving my home and moving up East to make a new life one of the best decisions that I have ever made. I think that I have made a pretty good life for myself up here, working part-time while taking a full class load. My social life takes a hit sometimes but I can always tell myself that working toward higher goals is more important than hanging out with friends on Friday night. Everything goes pretty smoothly, that is, until February rolls around and I have to fill out my Federal Application for Student Aid.

It would make sense for FAFSA to cover a vast majority of my school fees because I make something like four figures a year, but it somehow falls laughably short. And what could account for this discrepancy in what the Federal government thinks I can afford and what my pocketbook knows that I can afford? My parents, who somehow make so little money that they cannot foot any of the bill but just enough money to screw me over with Federal Aid. So every February I am forced to go through the uncomfortable process of calling my parents and trying to coax their half completed taxes out of them so that I may know exactly how much money that they waste chicken wings and Natural Light. Frankly, it enrages me!

The official cut off age for dependency in accordance with FAFSA is twenty four but if I have cut off ties with my parents so much that I have moved eight hundred miles away from them, then I should be considered my own person. I could try to be emancipated by the court but because I am renting a room from my aunt so I cannot provide a copy of a lease or utility bills meaning I do not meet the requirements. As it seems right now, I am tied to my parents terrible money management for five more years.

I tried to bring this argument up to the Financial Aid office at Framingham State who promptly informed me that unless I was pregnant or in the military, there was nothing that they could do for me. Is that what I have to do to be considered independent? I have to commit my life to the service or commit my life to a child? Is that how we classify adults these days? The rest of us struggling non-adults are condemned to graduate from college several thousands of dollars in debt.

The federal government seems to be ignoring people like myself who have come out of less than perfect family situations yet still made it to a university. Several friends from high school chose to enter the workforce right after graduation because they feared the debt that is now associated with educating oneself. A country of unskilled laborers simply will not cut it in the world economy that we face today. The education of citizen is the most important step that will allow our democracy to continue because an uneducated populous cannot rule. We must put education foremost or watch democracy perish.