another one bites the dust!

Paper 3 for Women Whining class.
Haven't gotten the other one back yet, maybe tomorrow.
This latest one was to talk about our budget, and then compare it with a single welfare/TANF mother's $669/month budget, then talk about how she could fix her craptacular life.

All I know is that I put this off for a week and decided to work on it at the last minute after Halloween festivities, and it's nearly 3 am now, which makes for "interesting papers". At this point, even if I fail this class, the knowledge that some poor sap had to grade my horrible papers is compensation enough.

________


“Wow, I never knew I spent so much of my—parents’—money on lattes, designer sunglasses, and booze for my drunken sorority’s parties! I take everything from my brand new car to my spacious apartment in the nice part of town for granted! The rest of the people in the world, especially women, sure have hard lives! I’m going to vote pro-women in every election and organize some marches!”
If this is the sort of revelation you’re expecting from me for this paper, it isn’t going to happen. While I may be living in the best conditions I’ve ever seen in my life, I know what it’s like to be poor, and the price of the debt I’m incurring for a worthless degree guarantees me my life will only go downhill come graduation day. I know exactly what it’s like to have a welfare Xmas and a food bank Thanksgiving, and it has nothing to do with my, or one of my parents, being a female.
But for the sake of a what I hope to be a passing grade, I’ll humor whoever has the misfortune of having to read my paper; however, as much as I enjoy sharing my personal embarrassment with strangers, I’m going to run a bit light on the details of my individual budget.
I don’t work outside of the forced slavery that is work study (this term, as least) so all of my budget comes from grants and loans. I learned the hard way that working full time while going to school not only makes it difficult to pass/stay awake in classes, but it also penalizes you in the eyes of financial aid.
Since everything is loans and grants, school costs are automatically deducted from my award, and I get what is left over to budget for 3.5 months, which works out to be about what I’d make if I worked a peon job full time. Almost fifty percent of this monthly budget goes to my ridiculous apartment rent. It was about $150 less last year, when I lived in a converted basement of a house, but the emotional stress of having to call in the city building inspectors and a lawyer to make it liveable cost me more in the long run. This year I’m in a decent apartment complex where I have luxuries like consistently running plumbing, and heat that works. I don’t pay water, sewer, or garbage, power is negligible when I wear 15 sweaters and carry a cat around instead of turning on the heat, and television is cheap for another 4 months, when my introductory rate runs out and I will disconnect it. Internet is also reasonable, considering it is a must-have for school nowadays.
I don’t spend money on clothes more than once a year when everything is falling apart. I ride the bus to school, which wastes an hour and a half of my time—time I could be working—waiting on transfers and travel time, because I can’t afford a parking pass. Laundry is $2.25 a week, every other week when possible. For food, often a large part of a budget, I try to stick to $5 a day, which works fairly well as long as I sit in my house rather than going out with friends. I don’t have children, which means I don’t have healthcare, but I save on their expenses, and miscellaneous items and activities eat up the rest of my money every month.
The only thing I consistently budget for is my Dance Dance Revolution budget to play at the local arcade, because the combined socialization and endorphin high from the exercise is generally the only thing that keeps me from shooting myself in the head some weeks.
The only reason I don’t is that I realize I have it pretty good. Without the support of family and friends, it’s hard for even a single person with no dependants to make it.
The second half of this assignment asks us to make a lot of assumptions in order to view it the way our instructor wants us to. It leaves us with a lot of questions—how old are the kids, does she have any friends or family, what is her education?
The main problem in any budget is housing. If having two children makes finding an apartment anywhere near as hard as finding one with two cats, living with friends or family will be her only option. However, this would also solve the other budget problem, which would be childcare. Living with family or friends provides many potential babysitters.
The second largest chunk of a budget is usually food. Once again, family and friends would be an immense help. Warehouse/co-op shopping saves money, as well as group meal preparations. Beans, rice, very little meat, and water instead of soda are by no means depriving her or the children of adequate nutrition.
As far as getting out of her hole and off the support of the state, the only way to do this is to get a decent job, or enroll in school and get financial aid. I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt and say she’s educated enough to net an office job. The oppressive male force won’t stop her from this job, as office work is usually relegated to woment anyway. Office jobs generally offer excellent benefits such as healthcare and childcare. If her children aren’t old enough to be the public school system’s problem for 8 hours of the day, she can use work’s childcare until they are.
“But what if she doesn’t have a mother, what if she doesn’t have friends, what if she has no degree or diploma, what if this, what if that?” These are questions the instructor would be certain to ask if this were an open to discussion class rather than a pulpit, in an attempt to box us into seeing things from her point of view. I realize I’m oversimplifying the situation, but it’s a basic assignment trying to open our eyes and make us think about the world. We have to take some liberties and make some assumptions to do this in a reasonable amount of paper.
My final suggestion, barring the viability of any of the other solutions I’ve offered and assuming that she is the white-trash stereotype that I’m sure the instructor wants us to picture her as, is that she take out a large insurance policy in the name of her children and throw herself off a bridge. She saves herself a life of mental illness and an eventual meth addiction, and her children are taken into custody of the state and ultimately end up with a foster family who will spend enough money trying to win their love to erase the mental scars of a mother’s suicide.
“Wow, that paper really spoke to me, maybe this was a biased and silly assignment after all! I think I’m going to give extra credit to this kid and frame the paper on my wall!”
Maybe eye-openers aren’t so bad after all….