Thursday, April 22, 2010

scholarships and such ...

today is thursday. there are approximately (counting today) 4 days left to my daughter's spring break from school. i've been sick for 7 days. u can imagine how boring this would be for her. but she's been working on scholarship applications for college. one scholarship i gave her is like 19 pages (or something like that) long. but if she got it, it would be for all four years and might well get her a decent education without having to go into debt up the wahzoo.

this one is so labor intensive though and they wanna know if she worked (she didn't) and if she didn't y not (because her mom felt it would be better for her to concentrate her efforts on her homework and grades while she was in school so that maybe she would qualify for scholarships). but now she's thinking she should get a job this summer and i don't have an issue with this except that wherever she gets a job, i'll have to drive her to and from because she doesn't have her license (and doesn't intend to get it) or a car (gees, we can barely afford the 2001 we have) and can't drive mine (coz its standard transmission and she only does automatic), and when she gets the job, because she's 18 now, she'll have to give 30% (more really and that's another bone of contention here) to the housing authority towards the rent. which in my view sucks coz she's still a kid in school and shouldn't have to give it. but whatever.

at any rate she had to write down any "special financial circumstances". so she wrote about how we live in subsidized housing coz her mom's a loser and got divorced and can't find a job. well, no she didn't EXACTLY say that -- but in a nutshell that's what it amounts to. she's a great kid and i love her bunches and i want her to go to school and get to do all the things she wants to do because i never got to do what i wanted (except the get married and have kids part and even that got messed up -- but whatever). and i want her to get to go to school and not come out owing her life to some stupid bank somewhere -- because nobody should have to start out their life like that -- bad enough u end up there.

yesterday we went to wally world for toilet paper and milk -- coz we're poor and its the cheapest place in town to get these things. and then to BJs and while we were, there she was talking about saving and how she remembered this friend of here's in elementary school saying she already had $5,000 for college. i told her that was coz somebody had given it to her and who does my kid know that would just up and give them $5,000 for college. then she starts in on how she should have saved all her money over the years and never bought anyone any presents (like for xmas and birthdays and mother/father days) and how she should never have bought herself anything she ever wanted and i'm like -- give me a break! all this crap is making my kid want to be a miser and i've lived with one of them and they rn't fun at all.

so i got to thinking that maybe i'm too far to the other direction and maybe its my fault that she only has $500 (from savings bonds my dad gave her over the years) and nothing more to show for it. and maybe i should have let her work even though her grades would have suffered i'm sure, because even though she didn't work her grades still were not high enough to qualify her for some grand financial aid package at either of the two schools she applied and was accepted to. her art is beautiful and she's an amazingly well-round and well-grounded young woman. she's got a great head on her shoulders and she's a wonderful role model to her peers and others. but did i do wrong by her because i give and give and give and give till it hurts me. i mean, my philosophy has always been that i can't take it with me when i die so y not use it now (of course, now i'm paying off debts so u know it can go too far sometimes).

idk. maybe i didn't do right by her and maybe i should have given her more of a "miserly" speech and not been so giving of my time, money, self over the years so that she wouldn't have seen that modeled and would have saved saved saved. i could "what-if" this to death i suppose. but right now she needs to get lots of scholarships (and this big one she's working on would be a nice one), so i'm just praying that the ppl who go over these scholarships actually see that its her mom who is the loser and not her and give her the shot she needs to go to school -- even if it isn't the college i thought she should go to ....

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