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I first got a Medical Assisting certificate at Ridely Lowell, which is a trade school, which I am currently in $18,000 in debt for. I then got my Associates at Dutchess Community College in psychology.\u00a0 I am now going for my Bachelors in Psychology. I didn\u2019t qualify for any financial aid because I am independent, even though I only make $25,000 a year.<\/p>\n
I work full time to cover outside expenses like food, rent, utilities, a car.\u00a0 I got a better job at a hospital recently which pays a little bit more. I take out loans for New Paltz. If I get a C or above in school, my full time job gives me a grant of $2500 toward tuition. To pay for this semester, I had to put it on a credit card though, because the tuition assistance from my job doesn\u2019t kick in until later. I work full time over night so I only sleep 3 hours a night. Its impossible to study.<\/p>\n
If college was free, I wouldn\u2019t have to work so hard, maybe just part time. It would greatly improve my college experience. I\u2019d get to spend more time studying and be able to meet deadlines. Now I record my notes to play while I\u2019m driving. I have to take a course over because I got a D, it was a course that started at 11am but I got out of work at 9:30am and sleep deprivation made it hard to stay awake through the class. I now have to retake the class but it’s full. I often have trouble registering for a class because it interferes with work, especially since I live 30 minutes from campus. If the class is too close to 5pm or right after then I can\u2019t take it. I wanted to get a concentration in organizational psychology but a lot of the required courses were at 8am and since my job wants me to be at work that early it\u2019s not realistic. I need the job though, so what can I do? This limits the options I have for my future prospects of becoming a Physician\u2019s Assistant.<\/p>\n
I applied for the Excelsior Scholarship, one day I was on hold for 20 minutes, then 40 minutes. They said I didn\u2019t have enough credits, I was in school for too many semesters, they said over the phone that as long as I don\u2019t have a bachelors and meet the income eligibility I\u2019d get it, but in the 11th hour of the last day they denied it because of credits. When I call them and talk to them no one knows anything.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I first got a Medical Assisting certificate at Ridely Lowell, which is a trade school, which I am currently in $18,000 in debt for. I then got my Associates at Dutchess Community College in psychology.\u00a0 I am now going for my Bachelors in Psychology. I didn\u2019t qualify for any financial aid because I am independent, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[134,133,26],"tags":[105,99,18,19],"class_list":["post-479","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-assembly-district-106","category-senate-district-41","category-suny-new-paltz","tag-course-offerings","tag-excelsior-scholarship","tag-job","tag-student-loans"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirgstudents.org\/storybank\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirgstudents.org\/storybank\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirgstudents.org\/storybank\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirgstudents.org\/storybank\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirgstudents.org\/storybank\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=479"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirgstudents.org\/storybank\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":702,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirgstudents.org\/storybank\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479\/revisions\/702"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirgstudents.org\/storybank\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirgstudents.org\/storybank\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirgstudents.org\/storybank\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}