Everyone jokes about being a starving college student, eating top ramen three times a day and eating on paper plates. Yet I can't help but feel like I'm the only real starving college student I know and i hate it. I don't like anything about going weeks without food and trying to put together something to eat like the time I tried lettuce soup cus I had chcken broth and well...lettuce or the time I made cyanne soup which was just a mixture of things from the spice cabinet but mainely, you guessed it, cyanne pepper. Most days I just don't eat, not that I dont want too I just have no money. Hell, right now I am two months behind on rent and my car is in the shop. All the college students I know aren't really broke. They have their parents who take care of their car insurance or their cell phone bill or pay for college. I have non of these options. When i get my finincial aid I have to pay off the debts I have accrued over summer. So far I have over drawn a bank account that has turned me over to collections and one bank account that has put a hard close until I pay the debt of the other account.

So my car dies on me on the freeway yesturday on my way to work. I work for peanuts at Disneyland but they give me a billion hours so its justified. I call AAA and they tow it to a place to get fixed which my mom told me to do. I have no money or any way of accessing the money in my Wells Fargo account cus its frozen so my mom says she's gonna wire me the money. Next thing you know she is on the phone to me hysterical about how none of us kids (I'm 23, my brothers are 29 and 31) help them out, all we do is take and call if we need something and that she is not an ATM so forth and so on. Ummmm, its not like I'm partying with this money, what am I suppose to learn from her lecture, that the next time my car breaks down and I have no money to leave it on the side of the road and hitch hike home? It's not like I'm asking her to give me rent money.

Sometimes I think I should just cut her loose and never depend on her for anything. If I get evicted I should just live on the streets. Like maybe I'm being a baby about this and I need to just suck it up and face the fact that I am poor, my family's poor and I am asking too much by going to college away from home. My parents never expected much out of me for some reason and saved about $1500 for my college education which bought me books at community college and BOY did they act like they were really doing me a favor. They were shocked when I was accepted into the University of California, Irvine but when they learned they had to co-sign for one loan (two loans I got in my name alone but were NOT even close ot covering the expenses) they had a heart attack and the first thing out of my mom's mouth was "If you die, we'll have to pay for it and we just can't afford it." Thanks for the support mom. I had to twist her arm and promise not to die until it gets paid back. What I really signed for was a whole lot of trouble. Now every time I need help: my car breaks down, the bus leaves me stranded, I go into the ER for emergency surgury, all I hear from my family is "that's what you get for going away to school." and by "away" I mean 4 hours away.

My first year I didn't have a car and I had to take the bus everywhere in southern california. Nobody walks in LA? Well, I did and it sucked. Finally got a car so I could do internships in LA or Santa Ana and so that I could drive home occassionally. Well, I have to keep a broom in my backl seat cus the starter wasn't any good and sometimes half way through the drive home when I would stop for gas the car wouldn't start so I would have to pop the hood and hit the starter with my broom stick and then it would be okay. One time I told my family I was coming home to visit and my grandmother said "If she breaks down, don't go and help her, just leave her there, that'l teach her." Teach me what?? That that is what I get for not going to school in Fresno. Oh God, how I hate Fresno and how the last place I want to be is Fresno. I will never hear the end of it for not going to Fresno state and becoming a high school teacher like everyone else in my family. I went ot Fresno City College while all my friends went off to UC Berkley, UCLA, or Stanford - isn't that punishment enough?

Ontop of that my mother remarried less then a year after my fatrher passed away and my new step dad has the two worst kids in the world. THey lie, they steal, they do drugs and now for some strange reason they reflect on me. When I ask for money to get my car out of the shop my mom gets mad and says I'm just like Ashley and Chelsea. Ashley stole $600 from my parents out of their saving jug. I used my mom's credit card, which she gave me for emergencies to get my phone turned on at $60. Guess what, my mom scoulded me and said I didn't ask her permission first and that I am just as bad as Ashley. Well, I couldn't call and ask for permission - I HAD NO PHONE! My mom is over that now and has forgiven me but for asecond there she was talking like they were gonna turn off the card - which i have only used twice as you can see why. My mom says I have ot be a role model for 20 year old Aahley who is married and has a baby but still lives with my parents and Chelea who is 15 and drinkin, doing drugs and God knows what with boys. And I can't ask for moeny or fuck up in any way cus I am the weapon mymom uses against my step dad. "Susan doesn't do these things luke, what's wrong with your kids?" Isn't my going to a good university, not having illigetimate children, not drinking and not smoking/doing drugs good enough? Now I can't even have car touble!

I wanted to go to summer school and the school offerd me a $5000 loan. My parents flipped and said no. So I had to sit and negotiate an amount from them to go to summer school. I got hosed. I needed at least $3000 and got $1000,mind you it was over $500 for the class units. Frankly I don't know why they gave me that - they should have just let me take out the loan but once again they would have had to co-sign so that was a hell no.

So one might wonder: don't you have a job? Why can't you afford your own life? Well, because I'm the working poor, and you just can't survive in southern california on minumum wage and having to need emergency surgury to remove your inflammed gal bladder and losing three weeks of work and not having health insurance because - oops - my mom forgot to add me to her policy - doesn't help. Luckily I am poor enough to get on temporary insurance for indigents (whatever that means) which covers ER surgeries. And I don't know where my money goes! I don't go out hardly EVER, if i do a friend pays my way these days, I don't drink, I hardly ever buy groceries, and yet I am still barely making it to my next pay check for gas money. Most paychecks I get are eaten up by fees from being over drawn the week before. Gues what kids? If you are over drawn too many times the bank will close out your account for misuse.

So here I am starting my senior year off on the wrong foot. Instead of being excited I am fearful. One more year till loans come due, one more year till I have to find a job. While my friends are planning trips to Germany, London, Europe in general and trying to get me on the band wagon all I can think about is how I wil need that money to survive on when I graduate. What if I get a job out of state? That money should go towards a plane ticket there not Berlin, and hotel there, not in London. DAMN. And they all have supporting loving families that saved for their education and are paying their way as a graduation gift. What really sucks is when they go out on Friday adn SAturday nights. They are young and having a care free good time and I am at home cus I don't have the gas money to drive over there or even worse, I have no money period.

I guess maybe I should see the positive side of being broke college student.
1. I avoided the freshmen 15 and the sophmore 20, instead I have lost 35 lbs in the last 7 months.
2. It won't go into shock after I graduate and start living onmy own with complete responsibility for all my bills because I already am!
3. I already know what its like to work and go to school full time so if I have to work long hours at the office it won't fatigue me
4. I'll know how to bugdet my money or whatever change is left after student loans are paid.
5. I'll never get nastalgic for my care free days as a youth unless high school counts HA HA!
6. Unlike my peers who have had it all come easy and won't know what to do when hard work hits them, I will be an expert on getting by on nothing.

My American Dream: To do something I love to make student loans worth it and to prove to my family why I needed to do this. And it wouldn't hurt for me to marry a rich Jew either...preferably in the accounting feild but hollywood director is ok too.