The Daily Mail and CBS Boston absolutely buried the lede on this story, so allow me to share a gem from this young lady’s GoFundMe page before we go any further:
We’ve all seen the panhandlers, giving us long faces as we awkwardly sit at red lights waiting for the light to change. I’ve read so many stories about these people and countless times when they are told to get a job, they respond they make more standing there so why should they? So I’m going to try it!
Oh boy. Those pesky homeless people, always taking our money but never our jobs!
So, according to her GoFundMe page, 18-year-old Emily Stutz — like many people her age both now and in generations past — has big dreams but lacks the funds to get there. Last I heard student loans were still a thing but hey, maybe things have changed in the two decades since I was looking at college.
Stutz says she’s maintained a high GPA throughout high school, took “every volunteer opportunity” offered, joined every club she was interested in, and worked 3 unnamed part-time jobs while in school. However, no magical college fairy appeared to offer her an all-expenses-paid trip to med school, which is where GoFundMe comes in:
When it came time to apply to college I felt as though I would be all set to get in and go to any school, that is what everyone told me. I always worried about money but I was assured by many people to not give up on my dreams and with my grades & after financial aid, I would be fine. They were wrong about the financial part. I got accepted to all of my schools and I was so excited. I pictured myself at the school of my dreams studying psychology on the pre-medical track, working my way to med school. All this got shut down once I received my financial aid packages. I was fortunate enough to receive around the most money possible in merit, ranging from $11,000-$18,000 per different schools, but that was it. I received no additional financial aid. While I was extremely thankful and appreciative of the merit money awarded, at $50,000+, all of my schools are unattainable. I applied to state schools as well but they do not offer merit so they all cost me around $20,000 since no financial aid money was awarded. Now what most other students are doing is taking out loans, what everyone who goes to college does! In my situation, this is not an option. My parents have had immense financial struggles and simply cannot come up with $20,000-$30,000 a year, nor are they able to cosign a loan for me. I have no other adults in my life who are able to cosign and I am at a loss. I see my dream of becoming a doctor slip further and further away as the days pass by so I’ve decided I am going to do whatever it will take to get myself to college.
Hold up one quick second. Since when do you absolutely need a co-signer for student loans? If that were remotely the case, we wouldn’t have gaggles of Millennials holding protest signs bitching about their $125k student loan debt for their Latin American transgender women’s studies degrees. In other words: if more middle-aged adults were responsible for these loans, fewer 20-somethings would be taking them out. Let’s see your FAFSA, kiddo!
Anyway, Emily is so motivated to get to college that she’s also taken to flying a sign at her local shopping center. It’s unclear if she elbowed out any bums for that prime spot in the median but fuck them, they’re lazy and refuse to work obviously. She claims this is all one little social experiment “to see if the people in my community are willing to help me out like they help out the other panhandlers.”
Except, you know, the “other panhandlers” probably don’t have anything to eat or a roof over their heads but hey, priorities amiright?
Good luck to her, I guess?