The Education I'm Paying For
My experience working directly with the Financial Aid Office started off on the wrong foot. Over the course of my year off, the office refused to give me my financial aid award until I produced a W-2 form from a temporary job that I had briefly held months earlier. My boss from that job outright refused to give me another copy of my W-2. The Financial Aid Office, in return, refused to tell me whether I could afford to go to Yale the next year. Finally, my parents and I visited the office in person (we’re from Texas) to sort things out. We sat down with a financial aid representative, and we asked her about the status of my financial aid. She refused to tell us how much aid I would receive, when I would receive that aid, or why there was no possible way to substitute my W-2 for other ways of getting my employment data, given that taxes for that income had already been filed. Apparently my father asked his questions too quickly, because after a while, she said, “I don’t have to be treated this way. Somebody else will talk to you. Please leave my office.”
If my father had not been a lawyer, we would not have gotten the W-2 in time for me to start school. In the end, he and some lawyer friends wrote a threatening, official-sounding letter to my employer and they finally gave us a copy of my W-2.
Since matriculating to Yale, the main way the student income contribution affects my life is in the form of opportunities that it excludes me from. I keep close track of many Yale panlists and Facebook groups, only to discard a majority of the offerings they present. Summer research in new cities, internships with exciting startups and international postings are closed to me. This summer, I will work in my home city, stay in my parents’ house, and save my money for the school year. Next summer, if I decide to take advantage of a career-boosting summer internship far away, I will be making that choice either at the cost of my brother and sister’s education or, if I decide to work extra hours to pay for it myself, at the cost of falling behind in the course of life here at Yale. As long as the “student burden” exists, I have two choices. I can find money elsewhere so that I don’t have to work, which means accruing more debt or asking for money intended to benefit my siblings. Or, if I work to fulfill the contribution, I will devote more time to paying the University back than I do reaping the benefits of the very education I’m supposedly paying for.
If my father had not been a lawyer, we would not have gotten the W-2 in time for me to start school. In the end, he and some lawyer friends wrote a threatening, official-sounding letter to my employer and they finally gave us a copy of my W-2.
Since matriculating to Yale, the main way the student income contribution affects my life is in the form of opportunities that it excludes me from. I keep close track of many Yale panlists and Facebook groups, only to discard a majority of the offerings they present. Summer research in new cities, internships with exciting startups and international postings are closed to me. This summer, I will work in my home city, stay in my parents’ house, and save my money for the school year. Next summer, if I decide to take advantage of a career-boosting summer internship far away, I will be making that choice either at the cost of my brother and sister’s education or, if I decide to work extra hours to pay for it myself, at the cost of falling behind in the course of life here at Yale. As long as the “student burden” exists, I have two choices. I can find money elsewhere so that I don’t have to work, which means accruing more debt or asking for money intended to benefit my siblings. Or, if I work to fulfill the contribution, I will devote more time to paying the University back than I do reaping the benefits of the very education I’m supposedly paying for.
