When I told my friends and family that I was going out of town for school, the general response was “College, huh? Guess you’ll be eating a lot of mac and cheese and ramen noodles!”
I thought this was exaggeration, something my friends were saying just as a joke and that I would be just fine living on my own going to school.
I think that pipe dream was put to rest when I was standing on my fourth-storey balcony, one of the many times I was seriously debating if I should jump, seeing it as my only way out of the physical and financial burden.
Students could be spending upwards of $20,000 just to get an education. I, showing up as a new citizen to Ottawa – having moved from Sudbury — last July with $2,500 saved, had no idea what I was getting myself into. I started getting less optimistic about how school was going to go. I spent all of my savings before September.
I finally found work doing overnights in a grocery store, which was my first layer of hell. Barely having enough money to pay rent, and then going to classes having been awake for well over 24 hours is not what I was expecting.
Little to-no sleep, with little-to-no food.
I don’t know how many times my stomach kept waking me up from power naps in between work and classes. I kept this up the entire first semester.
Stressing about a demanding program, coupled with worrying about how I’m going to pay rent this month, isn’t helped by short-cuts in a diet. It took a toll not only on my physical health, but my mental health as well.
I became apathetic about classes.
I had to take days off of school because I had no way to get there, not having even enough money for bus fare.
I would wake up vomiting because of my poor diet dictated by my budget. My colleagues asked me why my parents aren’t helping.
They are.
My mother and step-father have bent over backwards for me. I’m also not one of those kids who sees their parents as a bank.
They are their own people with their own problems who make their own money.
I’m a 20-something who should be more than capable of surviving on my own.
It’s unfair to them.
I’m sure there are people out there who have it much worse, and I fully know and accept that, but that isn’t the point. Schooling is way too expensive and puts students through so much financial and emotional turmoil.
It forces students to drop out, put themselves through unsurmountable amounts of stress, or worse.
Post-secondary institutions and the government alike should be making school easier to attend.
What bothers me is why it is almost a rite-of-passage for young adults to drive themselves to the brink just so they can get themselves the best education they can?
Why is our tuition getting higher when so many of us are already in debt?
Why do businesses and student funding like OSAP expect students who have 30- hour school weeks to work 30-hour work weeks just so they have the luxury of being able to turn a light on in the morning?
It puzzles me, but I don’t have time to think about it. The water for my ramen is boiling, so I guess I have to tend to that first.