Whether or Not to Immerse Yourself in Yale
When I came to Yale, I knew that the defining character that sets it apart from similar schools is the richness of its extracurricular life. Right away, I got involved in fairly time consuming things. I started doing the YDN, and I knew that I wanted to be further involved with them as time went on. I remember having the money discussion with my parents when I got my award in the mail following my acceptance, and we saw that, first of all, there was a parental income contribution of a few or several thousand dollars, which for a lot of families is not much, but my father has chronic medical problems and we have medical debt, and he was working to pay off his own student loans. We had a car and a house payment, and they could not take on another monthly bill. Then there was the student income contribution. I've had a summer job for a long time working as a concierge, which pays decently as summer jobs go, and I save my money carefully over the summer so that during the year so I can buy books and clothes. Quite frankly, it is necessary to keep up with your peers. If others are going out for dinner and drinks or into the City, you don't always want to be the one who can't join; you would never have any friends. I think that's one of the most effective ways that Yale is a class homogenizer: it normalizes going out three or four times a week, and it normalizes traveling widely. If you don't do those things, you don't fit into the community. Maybe that's fine if you're an introvert, but I am not. In short, I knew that I could not use my savings to pay the student income contribution, because I would need those to buy my tickets home, which are hugely expensive. Living in Alaska is almost like being an international student but without any of the institutional support that the international students get, like being put in a hotel.
I knew those things before I even set foot on campus, so I took out a federal loan for the amount that nominally should have been my parental contribution, what should have been my contribution, and a thousand dollars more for plane tickets. This was all under the assumption that I would some day have a Yale degree. As I graduate this year, I am about to put the supposition to the test. That allowed me when I came here not to have to engage in the melee of having to find a student job, which is truly a difficult process. This year I did look for jobs to have spending money, and I technically get preference because I am on financial aid, but, even so, it was impossible. I've heard some good stories about people who enjoy their jobs, but I've also heard truly draconian stories about the amount of hours a week people work and the pittance they make. The loan let me go out for the YDN and the Party of the Left. Our campus is known for the quality of its publications, its a capella, its theater, its debate. These are the most time consuming things, the most rewarding things, and the most "Yale" things. If you want to immerse yourself in the community and feel like you are 100% a Yale student in every manifestation of the term, student jobs are prohibitive.
I know another person who took out loans to fulfill her student income contribution, and she would talk about her feeling of the existence of two Yales. There is the Yale of people who work their student jobs and then drudge quietly home to do their reading, and if they are very studious they can keep those two things at bay. And then there are the English majors who run the YDN who are very smart, but they get to be so insouciant because even if they are busy and working all the time, they do it because they have chosen it. They enjoy it, and that is a fundamental difference. Whenever someone says that a student job is just like another extracurricular, it's not just like that at all. If I choose to spend 14 hours a week at the YDN, it's because I chose it. If I have to work in the linen department of student associated agencies, I probably did not chose it. Even in being busy, you get to be gregarious and happy and much more expansive. It's no surprise that my friend and I thought that the trade-offs of the loans are whether or not to immerse yourself in Yale.
The realities are there, and I know that I'm not an outlier. And I have heard horrible stories with the financial aid stories, and I have never had any of those, because I am a very low-maintenance white man. If I ever have had a question about my loan, I've been able to call up the financial aid office, and they're always incredibly nice. if I email them, they will email me back within a half-hour. But that's because I've worked in a professional setting, and I know how to draft emails that sound like "dear sir or madam, thank you for your consideration, very sincerely yours." I know how to smooth all the edges, I have a very good phone voice, and I don't mind making these calls. That's something that I'm sure not everybody has. If you're a foreign student or if your immigration status is murky, if they need to talk to your parents and your parents don't have English language skills, I imagine it's a train wreck. That office is not set up to help marginalized communities. Their employees are not culturally sensitive people, they don't have knowledge of a bunch of languages. If you do feel that you've been wronged, you must have enough confidence and bravado, and of course it's privilege that gives you all these things, to stand up to the person in the financial aid office and to say no, I did fill out the form. They're overworked, of course, and probably underpaid, but you have to be the kind of person who has no problem doing those kinds of things, which again, I have no problem doing. There really is no comprehensible book for how to do all of this. My family has had to figure it out, and it was really feeling our way through the dark.
About this time of year, I would start frantically having these long calls with my father about applying for aid, and we're from Alaska, so there's a four hour time difference, and I have to get my parents in the evening when they're not working, so it's midnight and one in the morning for me when we're having these calls, and half the time I'm in the library having to study, and I have to leave the library to take these calls. What's always odd to me is that the institution puts this incredible clerical burden on the people least suited to deal with it. People who are good with financial documents are people who are financially successful, who invest and who have a private banker. My parents aren't such people, and I know that there are people from even more disadvantaged background whose parents are even less versed in the difference between the FAFSA and the CSS profile, what do we need to have filed when, the electronic document service. Because it needs signatures, my father has to send it to me, I print it out, sign it, rescan that with my signature, and send it back to him. Thanks god they know what they're doing on the computer and have time to do that, but if that weren't the case, what would I do? What if I were the child of parents who worked two or three jobs and didn't have computer access? Then I would have to fill out all the forms myself. I would have to find my parent's tax documents, if they even had legal tax documents, and I would have to take time out of my studying to do all these things. There is a real time burden in applying for aid even if you are receiving it.
I knew those things before I even set foot on campus, so I took out a federal loan for the amount that nominally should have been my parental contribution, what should have been my contribution, and a thousand dollars more for plane tickets. This was all under the assumption that I would some day have a Yale degree. As I graduate this year, I am about to put the supposition to the test. That allowed me when I came here not to have to engage in the melee of having to find a student job, which is truly a difficult process. This year I did look for jobs to have spending money, and I technically get preference because I am on financial aid, but, even so, it was impossible. I've heard some good stories about people who enjoy their jobs, but I've also heard truly draconian stories about the amount of hours a week people work and the pittance they make. The loan let me go out for the YDN and the Party of the Left. Our campus is known for the quality of its publications, its a capella, its theater, its debate. These are the most time consuming things, the most rewarding things, and the most "Yale" things. If you want to immerse yourself in the community and feel like you are 100% a Yale student in every manifestation of the term, student jobs are prohibitive.
I know another person who took out loans to fulfill her student income contribution, and she would talk about her feeling of the existence of two Yales. There is the Yale of people who work their student jobs and then drudge quietly home to do their reading, and if they are very studious they can keep those two things at bay. And then there are the English majors who run the YDN who are very smart, but they get to be so insouciant because even if they are busy and working all the time, they do it because they have chosen it. They enjoy it, and that is a fundamental difference. Whenever someone says that a student job is just like another extracurricular, it's not just like that at all. If I choose to spend 14 hours a week at the YDN, it's because I chose it. If I have to work in the linen department of student associated agencies, I probably did not chose it. Even in being busy, you get to be gregarious and happy and much more expansive. It's no surprise that my friend and I thought that the trade-offs of the loans are whether or not to immerse yourself in Yale.
The realities are there, and I know that I'm not an outlier. And I have heard horrible stories with the financial aid stories, and I have never had any of those, because I am a very low-maintenance white man. If I ever have had a question about my loan, I've been able to call up the financial aid office, and they're always incredibly nice. if I email them, they will email me back within a half-hour. But that's because I've worked in a professional setting, and I know how to draft emails that sound like "dear sir or madam, thank you for your consideration, very sincerely yours." I know how to smooth all the edges, I have a very good phone voice, and I don't mind making these calls. That's something that I'm sure not everybody has. If you're a foreign student or if your immigration status is murky, if they need to talk to your parents and your parents don't have English language skills, I imagine it's a train wreck. That office is not set up to help marginalized communities. Their employees are not culturally sensitive people, they don't have knowledge of a bunch of languages. If you do feel that you've been wronged, you must have enough confidence and bravado, and of course it's privilege that gives you all these things, to stand up to the person in the financial aid office and to say no, I did fill out the form. They're overworked, of course, and probably underpaid, but you have to be the kind of person who has no problem doing those kinds of things, which again, I have no problem doing. There really is no comprehensible book for how to do all of this. My family has had to figure it out, and it was really feeling our way through the dark.
About this time of year, I would start frantically having these long calls with my father about applying for aid, and we're from Alaska, so there's a four hour time difference, and I have to get my parents in the evening when they're not working, so it's midnight and one in the morning for me when we're having these calls, and half the time I'm in the library having to study, and I have to leave the library to take these calls. What's always odd to me is that the institution puts this incredible clerical burden on the people least suited to deal with it. People who are good with financial documents are people who are financially successful, who invest and who have a private banker. My parents aren't such people, and I know that there are people from even more disadvantaged background whose parents are even less versed in the difference between the FAFSA and the CSS profile, what do we need to have filed when, the electronic document service. Because it needs signatures, my father has to send it to me, I print it out, sign it, rescan that with my signature, and send it back to him. Thanks god they know what they're doing on the computer and have time to do that, but if that weren't the case, what would I do? What if I were the child of parents who worked two or three jobs and didn't have computer access? Then I would have to fill out all the forms myself. I would have to find my parent's tax documents, if they even had legal tax documents, and I would have to take time out of my studying to do all these things. There is a real time burden in applying for aid even if you are receiving it.
