Voicelessness and Emotional Survival > Voicelessness and Emotional Survival Message Board
Finding voicefulness......losing......finding.....practicing..
Meh:
Hi Muffin,
There are many scholarship opportunities available, each with different criteria. I am not aware of any specific to homeless women, but financial need is considered in many of the scholarships that the Foundation offers. To get started, you would want to visit the Financial Aid office on campus. (I’ve attached a campus map with directions.) They can help address your financial needs and explain all of the options that may be available to you through Foundation scholarships, as well as other scholarships, grants, and/or student loans.
As far as Foundation scholarships go: The online application for Foundation Scholarships will be posted within the next week or so. You will want to collect one letter of recommendation, and an unofficial copy of your most recent transcript. In addition, the application will ask you to answer 3 short essay questions regarding your interest in attending & professional goals, your professional experience &/or community service, and growth experiences overcoming obstacles. Once the application is posted, you will have more detailed information about all of this. In addition, the Foundation Scholarship application requires you to have completed a FAFSA which is also available through the Financial Aid Office in.
Please let me know if you have any other questions.
I go dull when I read this stuff, the paperwork scares me, all I hear is yes this community college will find a way to take my money and I won't have any financial aid left over to attend a university. Truth be told I don't "get it"-- financial aid, I don't know how it works at all.
An impending mess and debt is all I sense...not excited about the programs or classes.
I'm not a black girl with children, I expect that's the intended recipient of these scholarships.
Maybe I have an emotional barrier or maybe it's something real, an intuitive knowing.
I don't know. There is some stage I don't seem to move beyond. I don't want to go to community college, kids writing papers about Lady Gaga or whatever. Who cares about that bullcrap.
I get frustrated and angry when I have to sign up for classes or even figure out the paper work.
What if I only get a certain amount of financial aid and it's squandered and wasted on the wrong program.
I feel contempt for these people who talk at me. Lips moving me staring at them feeling overwhelmed.
---
When I was taking college classes, long time ago, one day I went to the counselor there, I unexpectedly broke down crying in the women's center student counselor office. The office was advertised as a place for students to talk about problems with school. I still clearly remember her saying to me that maybe "school is too much for you right now".
I was shocked, thinking I would get some kind of help and the only message I got was discouragement. It stood out in my memory more then what any of the instructors taught.
That was probably longer then 10 years ago? And....and...now school is still the same "too much for me right now".
When I hear these things I feel hateful, especially when people take the idea of MY future into their own hands.
I can look at people with a mean arrogance, a smart ass cynical person.
-------------
Thinking about the housing director. I hate that strangers have power over important aspects of my life, and that they are ignorant about me.
Listening to Pearl Jam: Just Breathe Lyrics....
Meh:
This day is too long, I tried to meet a hiking group but it was cancelled due to someone's bad back. It's a boring tired type of day, sat down at a piano and plunked a few notes. The shade of sunlight is off like a bad note. It's sunny but it's dissonantly wrong.
Four cups of coffee.....fighting against one more. Wish I could have a party and cook all of this perishable food-bank food. The people in the shelter don't usually sit down and eat together. I could try to read.
These are days when I'm most lonely, wish someone was here to fill the gap, could go somewhere and do something. I walked over to a party type gathering at the Buddhist center, walked up the stairs, took my shoes off, listened outside the door for a second at the voices that know each other then turned around. I can't do it today. I stand there with my cup of tea and someone else always has to start the conversation.
I could lay in my backward spine bending bed and read an Annie Dillard book I found on a free books shelf. But my back! I'm going to pout, drink some decaf tea, eat some chocolate, then maybe go to the gym and walk very slowly on the treadmill. Maybe.
Contemplating writing a letter to the local art museum because they don't have a free day. Most museums have a one-day a month is free day.
It would be pointless, I may be the only person who cares around here.
I don't hear anything from my family. Nothing. I hear seagulls and cars and shuffles from feet.
Conversations with strangers only go so far to fill in the gaps of my life.
--Day for deep compassion to myself. Allow myself to be slow and tired and bored and heart broken.
Even the sunset is the most putrid shade of yellow ocher.
Hopalong:
--- Quote ---The concept of "effort" comes up in Buddhist teachings. Worry and stress feel like effort but it doesn't lead to an actual goal.
--- End quote ---
It really helped me to read this, MB...just in my own stuff. Thanks for it.
I loved that you got an evening out, some time with art, and good music.
I wonder if it might help a bit to start thinking about the financial aid forms, the instructions, and so forth, as value-free? Kind of like forks in a drawer? You take a fork because you'd like to ferry the food to your mouth. But the fork has no meaning and says nothing about you.
The paperwork, the forms, even the bureaucratic explanations (given you as part of someone's bureaucratic job) -- say nothing about you.
But they're the forks. You need to pick them up.
You have nothing to be ashamed of. Being bored and tired and heartbroken is how you are right now.
The FAFSA is just mechanical. You can do that online.
I hope you will answer the questions and fill out the forms and stop telling yourself there is no way it can work (like I've been doing).
It can work. It's just the first few times something DOES work are scary. Because if you have the habit (and the self-talk) about how your life doesn't work, and you don't work...that gets to be what's comfortable and familiar.
So advocating for yourself and allowing yourself to start wanting more is scary. Within it is the possibiliy (inevitability) of imperfection, mistakes, and change.
But if you keep holding a space open for things to work, more things will. Not all, but more.
love,
Hops (who can dish it out, etc...)
Meh:
My evening made up for my stagnant day, went to a theater show, started reading Maytrees by Annie Dillard, thought of an idea for classes that I'm hoping the director will approve of because I'm tired of bumping around aimlessly.
When I first started writing on the board I must have felt more anonymous then I do now. I was going to be truthful about how I felt here, say the things that I don't say elsewhere or whatnot. I think I've fallen into a little bit of weakness about the truths of my emotions, although admitting that I'm so lonely I would rather stay here then in a little apartment by self--felt like a big weird truth. I still act like I'm hiding my deficiencies though.
I think about the young woman here who is anorexic/bulimic; I stay out of it, every day I feel like saying something to her because she doesn’t see herself as thin. I feel like it is being responsible to say something to her about it.
Money came into my thought patterns today, my life is more stressed beyond the self-supporting/job situation. I was dismally depressed before I got to this point and I had money when I was dismally depressed, quite a bit of it I had saved up. Sure the economy is bad no doubt, simultaneously though I had a spiritual-break-down. An emotional break down or call it whatever, a deep-terrified and alive part of me gave up...or not....you know...maybe it's one of those dualistic things, it is all wrong and all right. Or all right and still quite wrong.
These programs, such as this shelter....well it is just housing.....but there is the idea that if money and counseling can be added to the person's life things will somehow turn around. I had money and I went to counseling before I got here. I was paralyzed by something else.
This is just me, right here, every day not knowing what events will come with tomorrow, I do know where I have been. I know what I have tried, what I have seen with my own two eyes. I know.
I'm sure my life is an echo chamber in my body, I just look out.
I'm alienated if it's self alienation or not.
Closing my window, hiding my computer, going to sleep.
sKePTiKal:
Hey Muffin... I hear ya about applying and the whole impersonal, screwed up application/admissions process. The first time I tried this, I walked out halfway through. Years later, I wound up teaching, then working behind the scenes at colleges. It sucks there too. Like Hops said, this "process" is a means to an end - nothing more, nothing less and from experience I can tell you the way you feel you're being treated really isn't personal. That in itself probably triggers some warning signals, huh?
Those poor front-line folk at colleges are kind of like first-responders. They learn quickly (or get other jobs) to not become personally involved with each person who shows up in front of them. They'll act friendly, be polite, and even sometimes go out of their way to be helpful... but if you're a perceptive person you'll catch on quickly that they really don't care. If they did really care about each and every person they worked with - they'd be burnt out and exhausted by lunch! Every day. Many are.
And the application, financial aid, etc bureaucratic process is incredibly redundant, cumbersome, absurdly targeted toward 18 yr olds who haven't graduated high school yet. Why this application process hasn't changed to reflect the reality that MOST of their students are now working adults - or at least adults trying to further their education - boggles the mind of rational people... and these are people who feel they're going to provide a great benefit of "education" to others??! BIG DUH.
OK - so that's the negative side of this mini-self-contained world within the real world. I'm not trying to discourage you at all - just saying you're perceptive, you are seeing things accurately, and I'm validating that and also your wariness about "what am I getting into??" Sometimes it's good to put the negative right out there... call it like it is... and then decide if you CAN or WANT to put up with that for the very real benefits/value attached to the pieces of paper issued by these places - and the opportunity to avail yourself of all the resources associated with school. (Truth: sometimes the resources available are way more important that the piece of paper at the end... even tho that's all employers usually care about.)
IF you do think you can put with the negative... then here's an idea - get to know some of these school bureaucrats in person. Even receptionists know how things work around there, who to talk to and will take you under their wing. They are very much real genuine people (some good, some fakey and lording it over others - just people, you know?). Get them involved in your story and in you and what you want to do... you will benefit from having a mentor or champion or buffer (or explainer of how this strange world works)... on the "inside" of the process. Professors are even good ones to select for this - though they're so busy, it's harder to get their attention... for instance an art prof might walk you through the whole app process and give you some good advice along the way, even if you only take one or two art classes and major in something else.
But what you need to get through that initial confrontation with paperwork and BS, is a real connection with a real person. There are people in all schools who know that there are people like you and me - I felt assaulted by the whole rigamarole of applying, you know? Of course, one is being "judged", too - ACT/SAT test scores, writing ability, etc. But it is possible to get through that process, with some assistance from someone you've connected with. I did quite a bit of this with students from other cultures who barely spoke english - but after they'd arrived on campus... because at that stage, there's usually quite a bit more "orientation" needed even for commuter students into this strange world... with it's own geography... rules... rulers...
So let me dangle a carrot now, about what I said about school resources being way more important than the end result. You are obviously a self-learner... someone who doesn't need "teaching" as much as the space and time to immerse yourself in the knowledge, information, and application of that in a real way... school provides this. It also provides "membership" - in your graduating class, in a classroom, in the new people you'll meet. You can blend in as much as you want - and still be an individual; seen as an individual. Recognized for yourself and your current and potential skills and value AS A PERSON. You'll have an opportunity - whether you avail yourself of it or not - to make some real lasting relationships. Maybe not with other students, necessarily - but with teachers, janitors, librarians, etc - the real people in those places. The real humans behind the bureaucracy.
It's a relatively safe place to re-assemble yourself, grow into yourself, and figure out where you really want to "land" after launching after school. To learn the rules of "navigation" out in the real world... and decide if it's worth it.
My hubs is one those people that I met in the school setting and many of our friends we met there, continue to be friends long after we've all left that space.
But only you can know if that's a path that has any value or attraction for you. Plenty of people actually do just fine, without pieces of paper... my hubs is one who attended classes... and didn't graduate... and he's way smarter than a lot of the administrators he worked for.
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