• otp@sh.itjust.works
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    8 months ago

    I took time off after highschool to work so I could pay for college. During that time, student loans reduced the amount of grants they’d offer to students who have savings.

    In my third year after I started college, they introduced tuition cuts for the first two years.

    I managed to graduate debt-free because I worked throughout (and before) college. This was before loan-forgiveness.

    I left the country for work after graduation, not long after leaving a job that was paying a few dollars above minimum wage. The same year I left, minimum wage got jacked up by a few dollars, which would’ve made life (and saving) a lot easier if that had been the minimum wage. (My old employer is still offering more than minimum wage based on extra training, and I had a lot.)

    My job was messed up due to the pandemic, and I came back to my home country. I wasn’t eligible for any covid relief because I wasn’t working in my home country during the pandemic.

    Still…I want everyone else to have all these things I didn’t have. I don’t care if it’s not fair to me. I can’t change what happened in the past. But if I try to change what happens in the future, maybe the next bit of assistance will come my way.

    Sometimes life sucks. That doesn’t mean I should try to make it suck for everyone else just because something bad happened to me. I’ll vote to help people, not to pull them down into my own setbacks.