{"id":1345,"date":"2009-02-26T21:30:55","date_gmt":"2009-02-26T21:30:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/2009\/02\/26\/im-sitting-in-starbucks-on-the-gw-george-washington-university-campus-after-a-meeting-loving-being-around-all-these-studen\/"},"modified":"2009-02-26T21:30:55","modified_gmt":"2009-02-26T21:30:55","slug":"im-sitting-in-starbucks-on-the-gw-george-washington-university-campus-after-a-meeting-loving-being-around-all-these-studen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/2009\/02\/26\/im-sitting-in-starbucks-on-the-gw-george-washington-university-campus-after-a-meeting-loving-being-around-all-these-studen\/","title":{"rendered":"Behind Every Stimulus Package Are People Who Need Help"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/.a\/6a00d8341f053253ef011168f23e50970c-pi\" style=\"float: left;\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Stim 2\" class=\"at-xid-6a00d8341f053253ef011168f23e50970c\" src=\"http:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/.a\/6a00d8341f053253ef011168f23e50970c-320wi\" style=\"margin: 0px 5px 5px 0px;\" \/><\/a><br \/>\nI spent part of Thursday sitting in Starbucks on the GW (George Washington University) campus after a meeting, loving being around all these students buzzing and working and laughing. &#0160;I loved college; could feel my head growing. &#0160;It&#39;s an amazing time in a young person&#39;s life and one that forms much of who we are later. &#0160;Now, though, the carefree collegian is a thing of the past. &#0160;Everyone has jobs and student loans.&#0160; Instead of leaving school with a &quot;sky&#39;s the limit&quot; ambition, many must look first for the job that will help them pay off their loans, and only then for the one they&#39;ll really love.<\/p>\n<p>Here are some stories:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>When my husband graduated from medical school we had under $4,000 in loans to pay off.<\/li>\n<li>One of my son&#39;s friends left undergraduate school with over $100,000 in debt<\/li>\n<li>A wonderful friend who is a born teacher went to law school and then to a firm.&#0160; I asked her why.&#0160; She told me she would only be able to consider teaching once her loans were paid off &#8211; and they were enormous.<\/li>\n<li>As I&#39;ve written before, both of my parents were formed by the Depression.&#0160; Each hoped for a career they were never able to pursue; instead they took the subject-related scholarships they were offered and were grateful to have them.&#0160; A would-be artist became a teacher; an architect a lawyer.&#0160; Neither complained overtly about this; I learned these facts in passing and both were quick to add how glad they were to have been able to go to college at all.<\/li>\n<li>My sisters and I were blessed to have college paid for; we were told that our education was our inheritance and not to look for much more, which was fine with us.&#0160; But most families just can&#39;t do that anymore.&#0160; It&#39;s too expensive.<\/li>\n<li>Many political observers posit that there would have been no anti-war movement in the 60&#39;s if college students had had to work while in school.&#0160; Most of us had our tuitions taken care of; that meant that we had time to organize and raise hell.&#0160; <\/li>\n<li>I remember a good friend, at dinner, saying to me bitterly, &quot;Jim and I never had time for that stuff.&#0160; We were both working to get through school.&#0160; You guys were so righteous but you had no idea what we were doing just to be able to stay through the semester.&quot;&#0160; <\/li>\n<li>I told a recent college graduate how impressed I was with what he&#39;d accomplished.&#0160; His response:&#0160; &quot; didn&#39;t do anything.&#0160; Colin slept in his van for a semester because he couldn&#39;t pay both tuition and rent.&#0160; Be impressed with him!&quot;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>So. &#0160;This is kind of a random list but when we&#39;re arguing over stimulus packages, we need to remember the people behind them. &#0160;Like these.&#0160;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<\/ul><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I spent part of Thursday sitting in Starbucks on the GW (George Washington University) campus after a meeting, loving being around all these students buzzing and working and laughing. &#0160;I loved college; could feel my head growing. &#0160;It&#39;s an amazing time in a young person&#39;s life and one that forms much of who we are &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/2009\/02\/26\/im-sitting-in-starbucks-on-the-gw-george-washington-university-campus-after-a-meeting-loving-being-around-all-these-studen\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Behind Every Stimulus Package Are People Who Need Help<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2,27,7,9],"tags":[796,49,799,798,797],"class_list":["post-1345","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2","category-current-affairs","category-life","category-politics","tag-college","tag-education","tag-scholarship","tag-stimulus-package","tag-tuition"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4gBq8-lH","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1345","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1345"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1345\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}