Trying to move on up and out of poverty so absolute that a high school diploma was as highly regarded as a PhD in some circles — assuming you lived long enough to graduate, that is.
Hunger and fear, always with you no matter what. Post traumatic Stress Syndrome is a given because no matter how hard you need to concentrate on a task at hand, you never stop listening for the gunfire, screams, screetching tires and sirens or footsteps behind you or even the shadows. Combat veterans have it too.
Made it through high school. Dad died of diabetes, the same disease that took out all of the firstborn in his ethnic family.
Mother died of alcoholism
Worked a series of minimum wage, dead end jobs —not sure how I made...
Bad economy. Not even minimum wage jobs.
Not old enough for social security but too old to be hired and no current job skills in demand have I anyway.
So I have the chance to go back to school and I took it because I did not want to be begging with a sign. But nobody will hire me.
My tuition and books are paid for but I do not really have a place to live.
But I kept at it and I have a very good grade point average.
I get an invitation to join the Junior College Honor society. It has Greek letters and from what I remember when I was working a janitor job, it was the people with the Greek Letters on their houses that got drunk and cursed me and had more money than I ever imagined existed... I had NEVER SEEN THAT MUCH MONEY!
But the invitation said I had excellent grades and I was eligible to join!
I believed them and I went and sat through a presentation and they wanted me to pay $10 to apply so I did.
That is when i found out that i would need $65 for international dues.
Where am i going to get this? My scholarship only covers books and tuition and i have a work-studies job but that barely covers food.
It's all made for young people in their teens who have both parents aloive to help them through life.
Well, I know that I am an older student but I amk too young for Social Security but considered by almost every employer I applied for a job with to be TOO DAMNED OLD — and some actually told me to my faced—because the EEOC in Texas is NOT doing AGE DISCRIMINATION in EMPLOYMENT cases —at least the San Antonio office isn't...
I have money for school but I do NOT have a way to make a loiving assuming I do graduate...
In exchange for that $10 I paid that would have bought me a week's worth of food, I get an offer to APPLY for some school, Columbia University which is way ut of state. I have no car not even money for a busfare so HOW AM I GOING TO GET THERE FROM HERE. Hello, people, i am studying under streetlights at bus stops. SOMETIMES I DON'T HAVE A PLACE TO SLEEP.
But they have showers at the school and I can manager to keep myself and my clothes very clean as a student.
I was unable to afford the $65.00.
So i lost out on ten dollars.
I then found out by a YOUNG WHITE LADY that they have SCHOLARSHIPS AVAILABLE to pay the $65... Oh, really, now! WHY DIDN'T THE PEOPLE WHO INVITED ME TO JOIN TELL ME ABOUT THIS???
About a year later, I received another invitation to join this HONOR SOCIETY!
Apparently some computer somewhere who has not a clue that THEY DON"T WANT PEOPLE LIKE ME IN THEIR LITTLE GROUP is churning out these invites. Let's see, at $10 a semester and $65 initiation fee —that's a nice sum for whoever is getting a cut of this action.
I decided I would show up for this and see if the same folks would remember me.
SO I did and it was more of the same old, same onld.
The same snotty, immature, self-absorbed middle class kids that used to torment me in high school and bully and harass me seemed to show up in mass. I think maybe four people out of a large auditorium spoke to me.
Because I have minor mobility issues, I wasn't moving fast enough for them and was variously pushed aside, cursed, climbed over and around and people cut abruptly in front of me without me being able to explain that I don't stop very well. I don't have a cane and the only way they can tell I have the problem is when I walk, rather limp.
It reminded me of HOG getting to the trough.
The guy who gave the presentaton looked like a displaced professional person who had had to go back to school for whatever reasons.
Damn! You are going to have to be perky Katie Couric, Pollyanna and not have a clue to meet THESE membership requirements!
They are expecting lots and lots of volunteer work as community service. That means no pay.
Excuse me guys but if i don't work, i don't eat. But of course, these folks don't have a clue. The on es like them did not have a clue in high school and the ones here don't either apparently...
I do what i can to help people but i have to be realistic too... I don't have $10 in my pocket to pay an application fee, the same application fee i paid a year ago.
Besides, if i spend all of my time v0olunteering in good works, when in the hell am i going to find the time to study. I have to work hard for every grade i make.
When I was going to the orientation for this honor society, I met an older, nontraditional lady and said Hello to her because she looked like she could use a friendly word. I recognized the clothes from the charities and the drabness and the defeated, hopelessness that unrelenting poverty brings.
I asked her if she was there early from the honor society.
She told me that they did not want older, non-traditional students in there —especially if they were lower socioeconomic level people!
I replied that i thought education was supposed to lift you up and give you better employment options than the jobs from hell i had been forced to work all of my life.
She told me that they would not let me in because i was poor and i was older and not to waste my time with it.
SHE SAID THE HONORS PROGRAM THERE WAS A RACIST, UPPER-CLASS WHITE, YOUNG STUDENTS PROGRAM ONLY — like from 17 to 25 years old and other people were regarded with suspicion. She wore an ID around her neck so she would not be embarrassed by the campus cops. It seems that all older people not matter what their race or ethnicity or gender are regarded as meeting a HOMELESS, UNDESIRABLE PROFILE. And are to be tossed and harassed and bothered by campus cops and security officers at every opportunity so they will move on... Older faculty members are OK but students —MOVE IT ON!
So I decided I had had enough of the Spiel of why I should join. They had meetings on Fridays, kind of like AA meetings, I guessed. I am not too much for any type of meetings because IN HIGH SCHOOL I HAD TRIED TO JOIN A CLUB AND THEY IGNORED ME AND HAD NOTHING TO SAY TO ME AT ALL.
Damn, this is not supposed to be high school again.
I asked the sponsoring faculty member about the rumor I had heard that they help you pay the money you need to get in the Honor Society if you are broke. I guess I looked pretty broke and pretty tired and old since it was shortly after noon and I had been up all night wrestling with designing an electrical circuit for one of my classes.
The faculty sponsor looked at me like a was a cockroadh OR WORSE! I was then asked, " Well, how much CAN you pay?"
I asked if they had a payment plan but I was IGNORED!
I then mentioned that I had paid my $10 last semester for the initiation fee and was I going to get any credit for that.
I got a look from h*ll and then i was told that i would have to pay another $10 and then i would be considered (emphasis on the "considered") for the scholarship to pay the $65.
I wondered what would happen to all those students who could come up with the $10 but for some reason or the other would not be able to pay the $65???
I GUESS IT IS A FREE $10 for someone.
And i never received acknowledgment that my $10 had even been paid except a receipt that had somehow been lost a year or so ago...
I had my application for membership filled out to see what would happen but it was declined.
I noticed that every time the speaker stopped talking, more students who came would file out of the door...
I can't believe that I gave up my time when I needed to be studying to subject myself to HIGH SCHOOL ATTITUDES, MENTALITY AND BEHAVIOR AGAIN...
Looks like in this economy, what difference will all of these honor society credentials make?
They say that you can get a $1,000 to a four-year university if you join their honor society but how much does that cover with the skyrocketing tuition costs...
I can hardly wait to see how these people with no -place to use all of this education and credentials cope with hunger, fear. Unemployment, joblessness that i have had to live with all my life!
Maybe not all of the chapters are like this but I am not sure.
I think they stress community service and getting out into the community to counteract the stereotype of the antisocial, intellectual who is not well-rounded, all they do it STUDY... Look what happens when you reach out?
My mistake.
The next time i get one of those impersonal, mass-generated phony invitations to this nonsense, i am going to toss it or give it to a real panhandler.
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