Academic Roadblocks. Help me get through?

This is the kind of day where I have crawled back into bed 3 times.

This is the kind of day that I make my wardrobe decisions for very practical reasons:  I picked a warm top, with soft absorbent cuffs, perfect for wiping away wet salty regrets.

I feel lost. No that's not right I don't feel lost. I know where I am and I know where I want to go. I feel stuck. I feel stopped at every fucking turn and my chest is ready to give in

The heater is on full blast and I still feel frozen.

Applying for grad school is expensive. Each application costs a $50 or more and each school requires an official transcript be sent out from my alma mater which cost 10 bucks a pop.

That right there is close to $300, not to GO to any of these schools, just to be considered. On some level I see this as paying to be noticed by academia and it makes me sick.

Sometimes, for me, academia is a loan shark.

Yesterday I started looking into requesting official transcripts. Former students must apply to regain access to their school information. This morning, after waiting a full twenty four hours to have my student account rebooted I was excited to log on and send out my transcripts.

I couldn't order transcripts because of the holds had been placed on my account

Not only am I required to write and turn in an self-evaulation for the quarter during which I was asked to leave the graduate school program (which I can easily remedy and might give good closure), but more significantly I owe money.

Unbeknownst me, I owe the Evergreen State College $350. More than 100 of which is interest accrued during the three year period I didn't even know I owed money.

350 dollars is the exact amount of money I've saved up to apply to three grad schools. There is no room in my finances for something like this.

I don't want to be writing about this today. I want to be tucking my head under the covers and crying about the impossibility I feel right now. The frustration and shame are crushing. Distractions keep tugging at my numb, begging me to push away this reality.

I hate this because it's one more roadblock, telling me that grad school is too expensive for people like me to even apply for. And that I am not "serious" about writing because I don't have enough money. I feel like I should just give up and accept my station as clinically unhirable in my chosen field and not worth a twinkle in the eye of academia.

This is the exact kind of barrier that years ago made me think that if I was good enough at school, if I was smart enough, if I did everything just right, I'd somehow end up "better off" than my family.

I've given up on being better than or even better off. I just want to learn how to eek out some sort of subsistence by doing what I love. And I want to have a degree I can make a few bucks with. Right now I don't have and combination of the following necessities for doing so:
the right contacts or
the right professional tools and/or
the right letters at the end of my name

Getting these things is starting to seem like a complete impossibility. I know I'll feel differently tomorrow and my fighting energy will rise to take on these barriers. But I will need help.

I've never done this before, but I am starting to realize that part of planning for tomorrow, when I will be fighting for this again, is asking for help.

So here goes.
Will you help me follow my passion and become the writer I dream of being?

If you can please donate.

You can do so through my gittip account.

Or contact me through twitter and we can work something else out.

I know that those of you who read my blog care about my writing, and whether you can give or not, the fact that you care matters a whole fucking lot. So thanks. For the bottom of my bruised heart.

<3 WRM

Being Poor is Part of my Culture

Privilege check: There were some things my family didn't have when I was growing up: new clothes, fresh vegetables, access to the internet, cable tv, etc. but we always had an adequate amount to eat, our house held in the warm and out the cold, and even though it was cramped with six of us, my family was (and still is) a loving one. We also had a loving network of friends and extended family who shared resources with us when we needed. I am endlessly thankful for all these resources. Because of them, I didn't really know we were poor until middle school and I realized that "cool" was something my parents couldn't afford (esp since my dad's business just went under). The comfort of love went a long way. I was poor, in my mind I still am, but, when it comes to my family (both blood and chosen) I have always been fortunate. Being poor taught me how to recognize and respect this fortune.

An exploration of "hipsters" & the classist appropriation of "irony"

There have been a LOT of articles circulating lately about the problems of hipster culture. Only one of which actually mentions the classist nature of hipster "irony" (which is not actually irony but more an obfuscation of discrimination & appropriation through the lens of "but I'm just joking!")

That is Lindy West piece for Jezebel: A Complete Guide to ‘Hipster Racism’ which in addition it's title focus on racism, specifically calls out the classism of hipster culture.

privileged people descend for a visit inside the strange, foreign spaces of othered groups. Like, I don't know, IHOP. Or that "scary" bar in the south end. Then they go home again. Catchphrase: "It's soooooo ghetto, but I actually totally like it!"

She does a fucking great job of showing how these oppressions are messily intertwined and often operate in nasty collaboration! Hipster racism & hipster sexism are alive and well and fortunately being talked about with delightful frequency in my internetscape, but I have been sorely craving a takedown of hipster classism, which I would argue is a huge source of hipster culture. Couldn't find it. So I wrote one myself.