Archive for April, 2010

the other shoe

Apr 30th

Posted by Michael in life

1 comment

So today reminded me yet again how utterly worth­less I am.

If any­one doesn’t know already, I’ve been (rather fool­ishly) get­ting my hopes up to go back to school this fall, though really I’m not sure why since my per­sonal his­tory with higher edu­ca­tion (like every­thing in life) is rather poor, but still, I was hop­ing it might be dif­fer­ent this time.

So I applied to the UC sys­tem, yet again, last novem­ber, for fall 2010, and was accepted by UCSD and UCR, which is great, because UCSD was pretty much my first choice.

Then of course, I filed my fafsa to apply for finan­cial aid, and for the first time, my EFC (expected fam­ily con­tri­bu­tion) wasn’t 0, but 675. I’ve no idea what 675 means, because the web­site says EFC is a scale that schools use to deter­mine aid, and not a direct dol­lar value.

Well, today I finally received my pre­lim­i­nary award, and UCSD only awarded me $4900 in grants/gift aid, so I’d need to find $23,125 on my own for the first year, and prob­a­bly more still for the sec­ond since CA tuition seems to increase every year.

There’s the punch to the stom­ach I was wait­ing for.

I know that I’m awful with money (and any kind of respon­si­bil­ity in gen­eral) and I’ll never repay that kind of finan­cial oblig­a­tion on my own with­out a ridicu­lously high-paying job, so money isn’t a worry any­more, and I’d cer­tainly never bet on a phi­los­o­phy degree to land me the type of job to enable me to do so.

So now I’m lost again.

UCR was bet­ter, I’d only need $8-10k in loans for the first year, but I never really wanted to go to UCR in the first place, and still, I’d never be able to pay back $20k in loans, and I have to accept or decline by tomor­row, May 1st.

Really just makes me want to cry, but I guess I should have seen it com­ing, I’ve known for a while that I don’t really fit in in this world.

just another day

Apr 16th

Posted by Michael in life

No comments

I’m find­ing it a lot harder to express myself of late. I know this is at least partly because I’ve not been writ­ing as often, but by the same regard, I’ve already come to terms with the fact that I can’t write as often as I’d like any­more, at least not here at this blog.

As most peo­ple know by now, I’ve just been wast­ing away my last few months try­ing to ignore how use­less I am, by play­ing lord of the rings online, and yes, I’m still slightly mor­ti­fied with myself for play­ing an MMO.

Iron­i­cally though, this has turned out to be an amaz­ing dis­trac­tion, and my brother, sis­ter and sev­eral friends think my moods are gen­er­ally more nor­mal (read, I’m not as depress­ing a per­son to be around) because of it.

I’m sure the dis­trac­tion is a part of my mood change, but as with all aspects of life, there’s more going on than just my play­ing lotro, and  I just don’t feel that I’m really ready to talk about every­thing else yet, and cer­tainly not here.

I’m actu­ally think­ing of try­ing to find a ther­a­pist now, but I’m not really sure how to find one that will see me for free, and odds are it prob­a­bly wouldn’t be a good one.

I don’t know, maybe I’m still too afraid of how other peo­ple see me?

Iron­i­cally, ‘teenage exis­ten­tial dilemma’ was a great way for shorty to describe what I’m going through still, but not in the way he ever thought.