What Was Possible for Us to Ask
Both of my parents retired before I came to college (their workplace requires employees to retire at 60). Although they both worked freelance and from home after retirement, they knew that they would have to pay for my twin sister and I to go to college with a less-than-stable income, so saving for college was a big part of our financial life growing up. My parents found every job they possibly could after they retired; my father even went to Ethiopia for two three-month periods, which was very difficult for our family, because he was worried about paying for college. My parents often told me that they were saving in part so that I wouldn’t have to work a job in college; they wanted me to focus on my academics.
When my sister and I got our financial aid award letters, we realized that we needed to appeal the decisions and negotiate for more aid. However, our family assumed that we would go to our top-choice schools and that we would eventually negotiate down to a price we could afford. This assumption was, in itself, racialized: my mom is white and went to Yale herself, and my dad immigrated from Cairo to work as a translator for the United Nations. While these are very different racial experiences, they both led my parents to expect that I would have excellent educational opportunities in the U.S., which meant that they felt comfortable asking the financial aid office to reconsider its aid. By contrast, last summer I had a Latina coworker who told me that she’d gotten into Columbia University, but that as soon as her family saw the financial aid letter, they immediately decided that attending was not an option. When I asked her if they had attempted to negotiate, she said the thought had never occurred to them. Race shaped both of our expectations about what it was possible for us to ask.
I always pay about half of my student income contribution: I always hold summer jobs that pay my full summer contribution, but my family pays my term-time contribution. Since I want to be a teacher when I graduate, this has meant that I haven’t considered many of the unpaid opportunities that are available. I know that if I really wanted to do an unpaid internship, my mom would put aside the money from her own income or ask my family in Egypt to help us out, but I don’t want to ask her to make that sacrifice. Last summer, I worked for a national nonprofit that has sites much closer to home, but I traveled to the site in Austin, Texas because it was the only site that would pay me enough for me to make my student income contribution.
That said, not having to work a term-time job has been a real blessing for me. I have been able to take the most challenging classes I wanted and also participate in a very time-intensive extracurricular, the Party of the Left. Last semester, I was Chair of the Party of the Left and took two junior seminars in my major; thinking about how little I slept and how little free time I had, I know it would have been impossible for me to do that if I had had to work several hours a week. It also meant that I had a safety net when times got hard. My father died very suddenly in the middle of my freshman year; over the next year, I spent a lot of my time grieving and trying to support my mom and sister. Having the extra time during the week meant that taking care of myself in the way I needed to didn’t take too large a toll on my academics and my extracurriculars. Furthermore, because my family had saved money, even though our daily finances were volatile for a while after my father’s death, I never had to worry that I wouldn’t be able to continue at Yale. My mom has to plan my tuition payments and my FAFSA with my family in Egypt, which can be extremely stressful -- and is another way that the financial aid experience has been racialized in my experience, since if my family across the Atlantic misses a deadline or is confused about what they need to do, it can have severe financial consequences for us. That said, not having to work a term-time job has allowed me to do what my dad wanted me to do, which is pursue my most challenging and rigorous academic goals, and so only paying half of my student income contribution has been really lucky for me.
When my sister and I got our financial aid award letters, we realized that we needed to appeal the decisions and negotiate for more aid. However, our family assumed that we would go to our top-choice schools and that we would eventually negotiate down to a price we could afford. This assumption was, in itself, racialized: my mom is white and went to Yale herself, and my dad immigrated from Cairo to work as a translator for the United Nations. While these are very different racial experiences, they both led my parents to expect that I would have excellent educational opportunities in the U.S., which meant that they felt comfortable asking the financial aid office to reconsider its aid. By contrast, last summer I had a Latina coworker who told me that she’d gotten into Columbia University, but that as soon as her family saw the financial aid letter, they immediately decided that attending was not an option. When I asked her if they had attempted to negotiate, she said the thought had never occurred to them. Race shaped both of our expectations about what it was possible for us to ask.
I always pay about half of my student income contribution: I always hold summer jobs that pay my full summer contribution, but my family pays my term-time contribution. Since I want to be a teacher when I graduate, this has meant that I haven’t considered many of the unpaid opportunities that are available. I know that if I really wanted to do an unpaid internship, my mom would put aside the money from her own income or ask my family in Egypt to help us out, but I don’t want to ask her to make that sacrifice. Last summer, I worked for a national nonprofit that has sites much closer to home, but I traveled to the site in Austin, Texas because it was the only site that would pay me enough for me to make my student income contribution.
That said, not having to work a term-time job has been a real blessing for me. I have been able to take the most challenging classes I wanted and also participate in a very time-intensive extracurricular, the Party of the Left. Last semester, I was Chair of the Party of the Left and took two junior seminars in my major; thinking about how little I slept and how little free time I had, I know it would have been impossible for me to do that if I had had to work several hours a week. It also meant that I had a safety net when times got hard. My father died very suddenly in the middle of my freshman year; over the next year, I spent a lot of my time grieving and trying to support my mom and sister. Having the extra time during the week meant that taking care of myself in the way I needed to didn’t take too large a toll on my academics and my extracurriculars. Furthermore, because my family had saved money, even though our daily finances were volatile for a while after my father’s death, I never had to worry that I wouldn’t be able to continue at Yale. My mom has to plan my tuition payments and my FAFSA with my family in Egypt, which can be extremely stressful -- and is another way that the financial aid experience has been racialized in my experience, since if my family across the Atlantic misses a deadline or is confused about what they need to do, it can have severe financial consequences for us. That said, not having to work a term-time job has allowed me to do what my dad wanted me to do, which is pursue my most challenging and rigorous academic goals, and so only paying half of my student income contribution has been really lucky for me.
