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This is a long post, but it addresses important issues for this election season, so I hope that you will read to the end.
She was "college grade" when she graduated from High School, but was tired of school, and didn’t know what she wanted to do with her life, so she opted to flip pizzas, and have some fun.
Fast forward 6 years: she is an unmarried mother with a 13-month-old and a newborn. She is living with the father of both children, but realizes that there is only one responsible adult in that house, and very little income.
She wisely chooses to go to college. Two relatives can initially provide child care while she is in school, and some assistance with housing, but nothing else. She cobbles together scholarships, grants, and student loans to make it happen.
A year into college, the relationship with her children’s father goes belly up. Now she has to work too, and add some daycare to her fragile budget. She takes service work, all that’s available...afternoons and sometimes long evenings at just above minimum wage, with study time virtually wiped out, except for nights that she should be sleeping. Still she persists, and graduates from her two-year liberal arts college with a 4.0 GPA.
Her finances are so bad that she works full-time for a year, then heads into a program requiring 3 more years (accounting degree + extra hours required for CPA). At this time she has a weekend job at a hospital as ER clerk: two back-to-back 16-hour shifts (7a-11p) on weekends when grandparents can keep the children. She picks up her sleeping girls at 11:30 or 12:00 on Sunday night, drives an hour home and PRAYS that they can be put to bed without waking up. She has 8 am classes, and must get the girls to daycare or school before that. Despite the horrid weekends, she has a "good" schedule. She takes classes in am, has a couple of hours to do lab work, run errands, etc. then picks up the girls so that they have afternoons and evenings together compensating for the "lost" weekends .
Last May, she graduated Magna Cum Laude, and joined the accounting firm where she did her internship at a salary of about 3 times what she made previously.
IT WOULD NEVER HAVE HAPPENED WITHOUT PUBLIC ASSISTANCE.
Access to grants, scholarships, and affordable student loans are essential for poor, as well as most middle class students to enter college or voc/tech schools to improve their prospects. In varying degrees depending upon her circumstances, this woman had her children covered by Medicaid, day-care assistance, food stamps. It DID pay off. She will now pay far, far more in income taxes during her lifetime than the assistance that she received, and will contribute more to our common good.
Despite the enormous costs we face cleaning up from the disastrous Bush/Cheney administration, we MUST remember the young people who are trying to get ahead of the curve. They richly deserve the dollars the republicans love to take away, and we Dems must keep it coming. It is one of the best investments we can make for our country today, and certainly for our future.
Yes, I’m the mother of this wonderful young person, and I’m not just proud of her, I’m in awe. To persevere and succeed under her circumstances is truly remarkable. She was a brilliant, highly-motivated student, and a very productive intern which led to a great job straight out of college. She is also a terrific mom and daughter, and my greatest joy today is seeing her without the stress written all over her face.
If you hear someone talking about "Welfare Queens," please feel free to share her story. (ummmm If you do, she drove an old Chevy Cavalier, not a Caddy, and she did ALL the HARD WORK, George.)
Now let’s go make sure it happens for someone else’s daughter or son!
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