Financial Aid
so, maybe i will go to columbia after all. i don't wanna say no to columbia just because hunter may or may not give me enough financial aid. hunter says i probably won't get a yes or no from them about admission until mid or late april, and then how long until i get my financial aid package? maybe grad school financial aid packages will be like undergrad ones for me. the undergrad public schools i got into gave me shitty financial aid packages; i wouldn't have been able to attend those schools at all. the expensive undergrad private schools i got into gave me almost full rides. maybe columbia will give me really good financial aid as well. maybe it will end up that it will be cheaper to go to columbia after all, due to their footing part of the bill. or, if not cheaper, they may give me enough financial aid that i will actually be able to go there. if they give me enough, i will probably say yes to them instead of opting out on the hope that i will get into hunter, let alone get enough financial aid from them.
anyway, hunter is pissing me off right now. should that surprise me? it's cuny!!! i used to work at cuny and saw the degree of incompetency amonst the adminstrative staff there. no, i am sure the professors at the hunter school of social work are great and the academic program itself is great. but as for everything else i'll have to deal with as a cuny student, i dunno. as a whole institution, columbia is way better. so if i end up accepting columbia's invitation, there's nothing to feel bad about. it will be a higher-quality experience overall.
columbia invited me to an accepted students of color social gathering on thursday evening. i'm going to attend it. if i go to school at columbia, i want to live in harlem. i have wanted to live in harlem anyway, and now it would be the most convenient place to live if i were going to school up there. plus, i want to continue living around "my peeps" and i want to live around the community i will be an advocate for. plus, i have family history in harlem. my godparents both lived there and worked there (my godmother was a politician and civil rights activist up there) and my mother worked for her up there in the '60s. i remember my godmother's picture on my wall in my room all throughout college, telling me i could make it through. there were several times that looking at her picture saved me from giving up or going absolutely mad. what if i lived and went to social work school in her home turf? i would make her so proud.
maybe things will actually work out for me with school and housing. i pray. i've had enough hardship in my life. god threw me a bone with being accepted to columbia and by giving me this temp job for the next 1 1/2 - 2 months. i hope god throws me another bone by opening the door for me to actually go to school and have a place to live close to it. maybe my godmother will pull some strings up there for me, to help this all work out for me. maybe alex will help her pull the strings. if i lived close to school, i could have a cat. i could come home often and care for the furry little one. that would be too good to be true: going to school for what i want to go for, living near school in a meaningful place, having an animal friend of my own...maybe i would even find a partner. then i would have nothing to complain about. life would be very good.
yesterday i volunteered at an event that my animal shelter put on to raise money for finishing the new shelter location. we had a fancy breakfast for dogs and their humans, and then we sold daffodils out on the street. i got to take home 5 bunches of daffodils. they are bright yellow and are in a vase on my kitchen counter. they are this big, bright bouquet of life in my dark little lair. yeah, i need to do major spring cleaning this weekend, fer sher!!! you know you need to clean when fresh, beautiful flowers clash horribly with the rest of your apartment. i will miss the low rent i pay, but i won't miss not really having my own living space (i live amongst my friend's belongings) or living way the fuck out in queens, or not having anywhere to hang out in the neighborhood, or not having any friends nearby. i finally discovered that there is ONE good restaurant in my neighborhood: a mexican restaurant by the subway terminal. it's really good food! it's amazing to finally have a place in this godforsaken neighborhood that i want to go to! i guess i will be living here through june or july or whenever my friend moves back.
anyway, hunter is pissing me off right now. should that surprise me? it's cuny!!! i used to work at cuny and saw the degree of incompetency amonst the adminstrative staff there. no, i am sure the professors at the hunter school of social work are great and the academic program itself is great. but as for everything else i'll have to deal with as a cuny student, i dunno. as a whole institution, columbia is way better. so if i end up accepting columbia's invitation, there's nothing to feel bad about. it will be a higher-quality experience overall.
columbia invited me to an accepted students of color social gathering on thursday evening. i'm going to attend it. if i go to school at columbia, i want to live in harlem. i have wanted to live in harlem anyway, and now it would be the most convenient place to live if i were going to school up there. plus, i want to continue living around "my peeps" and i want to live around the community i will be an advocate for. plus, i have family history in harlem. my godparents both lived there and worked there (my godmother was a politician and civil rights activist up there) and my mother worked for her up there in the '60s. i remember my godmother's picture on my wall in my room all throughout college, telling me i could make it through. there were several times that looking at her picture saved me from giving up or going absolutely mad. what if i lived and went to social work school in her home turf? i would make her so proud.
maybe things will actually work out for me with school and housing. i pray. i've had enough hardship in my life. god threw me a bone with being accepted to columbia and by giving me this temp job for the next 1 1/2 - 2 months. i hope god throws me another bone by opening the door for me to actually go to school and have a place to live close to it. maybe my godmother will pull some strings up there for me, to help this all work out for me. maybe alex will help her pull the strings. if i lived close to school, i could have a cat. i could come home often and care for the furry little one. that would be too good to be true: going to school for what i want to go for, living near school in a meaningful place, having an animal friend of my own...maybe i would even find a partner. then i would have nothing to complain about. life would be very good.
yesterday i volunteered at an event that my animal shelter put on to raise money for finishing the new shelter location. we had a fancy breakfast for dogs and their humans, and then we sold daffodils out on the street. i got to take home 5 bunches of daffodils. they are bright yellow and are in a vase on my kitchen counter. they are this big, bright bouquet of life in my dark little lair. yeah, i need to do major spring cleaning this weekend, fer sher!!! you know you need to clean when fresh, beautiful flowers clash horribly with the rest of your apartment. i will miss the low rent i pay, but i won't miss not really having my own living space (i live amongst my friend's belongings) or living way the fuck out in queens, or not having anywhere to hang out in the neighborhood, or not having any friends nearby. i finally discovered that there is ONE good restaurant in my neighborhood: a mexican restaurant by the subway terminal. it's really good food! it's amazing to finally have a place in this godforsaken neighborhood that i want to go to! i guess i will be living here through june or july or whenever my friend moves back.
posted by Blåbär Björn at 12:47
1 Comments:
Congratulations, Mer! I was going to apply to Columbia's MFA program years ago. Whatever you decide, I'm sure you'll end up a great social worker. I'm glad too that you got a temp gig. Let the money flo!
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