College can be an exciting — and expensive — time for young people. One young lady across the pond has learned just how expensive, and naturally she’s banking on the kindness of strangers to get her out of the hole.
Off to GoFundMe we go!
After embarking on a voyage to the mainland (aka England) I’ve faced the hardships that every student has underwent. The costs of nightclub entry and trebles do add up, whilst the overdraft hits sky rocket figures. If Kanye West can receive donations I hope I can too xoxo
Her plea landed her an interview with The Tab, and everything sort of unraveled from there. When asked what gave her the idea for the GoFundMe page, McCormick mentions Kanye West as the inspirational figure he is:
“I came up with the idea of the page after a night out. I was reading a group chat from back home and everyone was moaning about their financial situation. Then someone mentioned how Kanye West had set up a GoFundMe page to eradicate his debt, and thus we turned to odds on. Being northern Irish doing something for the banter is always a valid reason, jokes on them though cause I got a tenner out of setting it up.”
What she claims started as a joke has now made the rounds in highly reputable publications* such as The Mirror and the Daily Mail. Oh yes, you knew the Mail was going to have a field day with this:
A cheeky student who spent her first year at uni partying almost every night has launched an online campaign to help clear her overdraft.
Emma McCormick, 18, has only managed to raise £10 so far, but says she remains optimistic.
The Newcastle University fresher realised she needed a helping hand after blowing her loan on alcohol, clubbing and trips to other cities, and running up £1,000 worth of further debt.
But she is keeping the exact total of her debt under wraps for now.
The comments over at the Mail are, well, predictably Daily Mail-y. All 1000+ of them.
McCormick is sticking to her story that the GoFundMe page was just a joke, and says on Facebook she is “not acc a bad person if you know me.”
In an update to the fundraiser, she appears to be handling the “media scandal” well:
from what started as a joke between friends on a facebook post, this story was catapulted into a media scandal, with newspapers claiming I was in thousands of pounds of debt when I in fact have an overdraft of £250. Like most students I receive the basic loan, 1100 a term and coming to the end of each term I roughly would have spent 1200-1300 on food, basic amneties and social activities with my friends.
I wanted to start saving money so that after university I could travel, hopefully undertake a volunteer project. With this money I will be able to put it away in my savings account. Thank you so much to those who donated and please know that I never once believed for a second that anyone would, this was done purely as a facebook status amongst friends. anyone who did donate did so from the kindness of their heart.
As we say in the South, bless her heart.