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Steven: An Aspiring Disabled, Student, Veteran, and Divorcee

Posted by youngidealist on 2012-03-05 01:58:00

Hi.

Thanks for taking the time to read my request. I'm 30 years old, still in college and living with my parents. I've made a lot of great accomplishments in my life with far less support than most people who make it this far. Of course, with that said I've also made plenty of mistakes.

I grew up with a single parent, and another parent who visited annually just to stir up emotions and make my life miserable. When I was 18, I decided to work really hard to lose weight so that I could join the US Air Force. I had a strict plan that I was going to follow to succeed in life.

Unfortunately my superiors in the USAF would not accommodate that plan to independence as they forced me to find my own way from the barracks to work (a 40 mi drive), so I had to immediately struggle to get my drivers licence and I had to buy a car on an Airman's paygrade.

My income wasn't enough to afford the car and gas and other living needs that I was expected to pay, so eventually I had to leave the Air Force before my term was up (under honorable conditions). I tried to work as a civilian. The transfer was tough and I was vastly uninformed about what to do and what my options were. I'm the first first generation college student of my extended family.

After some petty jobs that would each take more than 10 years to be able to earn enough to live independently, I finally found a nice nighttime custodian job that was at least simple enough for that kind of pay. I was the night time custodian, but I was also a guy to have on call at this retirement home where I worked. If people's toilets flooded or a nearly deaf resident left their tv on past quiet hours (once I could hear one through 3 floors!) I was the guy to send up to fix it.

Having my first satisfying job as a civilian, I was able to investigate community college during the day, so eventually I enrolled and tried taking a few classes while working full-time. College was my saving grace. I never felt like I belonged anywhere until I first started to take college courses in math, science, and philosophy. I found the tutoring lounge on campus, made a lot of friends there, and I spent many hours cramming and helping those in need.

This soon led to me finding financial aid, making arrangements with my parents (my mom and my stepfather) to let me go to school full-time while I lived with them, and putting in my 2 weeks notice at work to focus exclusively on school.

My counselors advised that I pick where I want to transfer to and then figure out the details of how to get there after I got accepted. I think this was bad advice. While I ended up choosing to transfer to a university that had my desired major, Biophysics, it was 60 miles away from where my parents lived. My car that I had bought when I was in the Air Force also eventually broke down from not being able to afford maintenance while I worked, and was towed away for being in the public street for too long.

Finally, I got accepted to UC San Diego to work towards a degree in Physics with a specialty in Biophysics. When it came time to transfer, I got as involved as I could on how and when I was supposed to receive the financial aid so that I could go get an apartment and everything, and my school kept telling me, "you should get it tomorrow" until about 2 weeks into my first quarter when I finally got the support.

Despite this rocky start, I managed to get into a good shape for myself, making my way slowly but surely through school. Learning a great deal. Eventually when I felt the struggle was too difficult, I changed my major to Neuroscience before I began my upper division coursework.

So, as I settled into my schooling and struggled with maintaining financial independence on financial aid, I managed to get myself into maintaining a great aquarium hobby, owned two great little kittens from a street cat program, led as president of a student organization for one year, and eventually I got married. I also carefully learned about the stock market and managed to make some great gains with money that I had invested from financial aid savings.

In 2010, my gains were over 100%. That amounted to $2000 doubling itself, but still, that says a lot about me as a trader. However, 6 months into my marriage, she said she wanted out, grabbed the car that we both paid into (most of the money was mine from stocks; $5500 worth), and refused to pay her share of 2 months rent. That happened in December of the year of 2010.

2011 was a difficult year for me. I fought hard to maintain things, especially my head, but it was tough. I lost 45 lbs from exercising regularly, made lots of new friends, and I got some volunteer work experience in a Neuroscience lab. But I just couldn't focus well enough to maintain my finances and my grades, so I had to drop out and live back with my parents.

Despite how tough it's been, not finding work, struggling with the ins and outs of the VA, and just needing a professional therapist to talk to and help me keep my head straight but never being able to get one, I've managed to recuperate well enough and learn a lot more about this bottom floor of society that I've been so desperately trying to escape my whole life.

I've gone looking for opportunity in every direction. I've tried changing my career goals, collecting recyclables, writing online, trying any online scheme that didn't include me forking out money to get it, imagining what I could write as a novel, tried to make money through playing video games, making goal after goal after goal for myself, but still just not being able to get just the right amount of money to put me back on my feet.

I'll be going back to school in April at the risk of having to do it as a homeless person if the VA doesn't pull through for me. They recently approved my 10% service connected disability status and now I need to jump over a few more hurdles to get my more significant service connected disabilities recognized. I'm also seeing what the vocational rehab people can do for me despite the bureaucratic issues that are stopping them from helping me all the way.

BTW, this whole time that I've gone through life with common lower class difficulties, I've been disabled with a number of small conditions that all add up to a hard time. I have lower back issues that the military has yet to own up to. Community college found also that I have a learning disability which makes some intellectual tasks show up as lower than average ability for me while the rest of my intellect is high enough to expect that I could easily get a Masters Degree or a PhD. My biggest difficulty in school is that they don't give me enough time to show them what I know or what I'm capable of.

From working with special needs students as a tutor, I have proven to myself that there is a major problem in the education system. Most teachers never simplify the material into a clear picture of what they want to teach. If you want someone to learn something, the last thing you should be fuzzy on is what it is exactly that you want them to learn. We can't all work like intuitive Jedi or sophisticated parrots.

If you help me out, here is a list of the priorities of what your money will go towards, in order of their priority If you would like to request that I spend your donation on a specific cause, please let me know:

1. A working cheap economic vehicle.
I need something that I can sleep in and that will take me wherever I need to go. Preferably something that can stow quite a few recyclables as well to pay for gas, but not an SUV or truck or van (Unless that's all that is cheap of course. Not likely but you never know.).
I'll aim for great gas mileage, but I'm thinking that I should attend some police car auctions to see what the cheapest deal I can find is. This car would make a great shelter for me while I return to my far away school.

2. Investing on the stock market.
Trust me, I know how to fish. If you want to send me a request for proof I'd be glad to compose some evidence of my finest moments as well as my worst to show you that I can do well for myself on the stock market, even during the recession. What I could really use right now, is a little bait. Trading is good money for me, but to make enough to make gains worth more than the commission cost (about $10), you need about $300-1000 per investment. $300 is more for the high risk lottery plays on the market. I even made a blog about it if you would like to see:
http://www.squidoo.com/TheYoungidealistEconomyBlog
If you are willing, we can arrange something personal so that you wont need to worry about me putting the money you offer at high risk and blow it all. Might even be able to arrange something where I could make money for you to prove myself before accepting your donation. Whatever the case, I know we'd have to make it a personal arrangement to satisfy the current laws.

3. Working towards paying my debts to my friends.
My friends have been really supportive through these hard times, though they are starving students themselves. To keep up my morale they've bought me food, given me a place to crash when they could, and even paid to have me join them at fun local events. I have some money that I've promised them back, and I plan on making due on those promises as soon as possible.

4. Paying off my debts with companies.
I've had times where I couldn't afford to pay for rent and had to leave, like when my wife left me to live with her parents. These issues follow me on my credit score and I would like to work towards removing them so that I can turn my life around.

5. Getting a good start towards paying off my student loans.
I know I won't be able to pay them off before I find a good career with my degree. I would just like to have something to start making some automatic payments with and put that part of my bad credit score behind me as well.

6. Buying a home.
My mom never owned a home. No offense meant to land lords out there, but I really think the rental system is way out of line. My mom was always a hard worker. Way better than me, yet she could never own a home because she didn't have the money. Meanwhile, people with money could live in great big houses for less than she even had to pay.
I want a house to own. Probably start with a condo and seek ways to improve it and flip a profit out of it. Then I want to keep building up money from housing until I can manage to build an apartment building.
If I could, I'd like to make an apartment building near a university that offers cheap housing using the Japanese capsule model or something even more economic and more comfortable.

7. Making an online tutoring site meant to offer free tutoring and tutoring for tips. Imagine a site (I have yet to know of one) where people can collect their resources on a class, much like they collect info on ratemyprofessor.com, but also seek help from others who are taking the class or who have taken the class. Donors like you can offer money to tutors who post their notes and stories on the site, alongside ratings from other students that they helped.
Some tutors can offer their rates for help, sell their notes online for cheap, or just offer their help whenever they can and ask to be tipped through paypal if someone likes their work. My hope is that such a site could help to put an end to sophistry in the college system once and for all, making education easy and affordable for everyone.

8. After I have everything I'm hoping for above, the sky is the limit. But I would prefer to put the extra money that I don't need to good uses. I would spread a little philanthropy around, give to others in need on this site and through other resources.
I'd also look to teach others how to fish. I think a great way for the economy to be fixed would be if philanthropists made some really good employee owned companies. Make the place pay for itself, skim a little off the top, and walk away knowing that you really were a job creator.
I think that everyone who is capable of work and who chooses to work deserves to have their own independent living situation. I know that we are a long way from that, but I tend to be an optimist. I would like to try and make the world a better place, if nothing else.

Aside form financial help, I'm interested in anything else that I could get that's useful. Advice, Neuroscience Career connections, work, hobby or volunteer work that can easily become lucrative, I'm really all ears. Thanks again for taking the time to read my request. I hope you find it in you to help me out, even get to know me if you'd like. Bet you $5000 I can make you laugh. Did I win? >;) it was worth a try anyway.

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