Today is Blog Action Day, an annual collective-action event when everybody writes about the same topic—Poverty. The organizers of the event helped out by providing a nice list of resources on the subject, but I’m going to riff on our own experiences with poverty.
Today also happens to be my youngest son’s fifth birthday. Archie has been excited about it for weeks. Number 5 was a big one for me, too. It was the first time I counted down the days and could later recall the presents I got. In a few hours, Archie will be surprised with a fuzzy robot Panda that is tops on his most recent wish list.
I’m amazed we were able to get anything at all.
Not too long ago, I had to ask one of my oldest and dearest friends for some financial help. This is the second time he has come through for me since deciding to return to graduate school and in the process relocate my family by a couple tax brackets. It is never easy asking for help, but the consequences of saying nothing ranged from loss of insurance to defaulting on mortgage to starvation. We could pick our poison.
One such request was not sufficient to get us out of the jam, either; My father had to help out, too. All this took place before the stock market crashed, making the generosity that much greater. Throw in annual April panic and tragedy, and it is assured that it takes a village to earn a doctorate.
Money and I have never had a great relationship. Very important people in my life need me to get some, so I do my best in between classes and papers and parenting. Indiana University gives me a little, certainly enough for a single grad student to get by, but not a family of 4+ requiring medical coverage.
Supplemental jobs are available, but at a cost of time and sleep. I am seriously considering becoming a part-time student in the spring to increase the money in the family bank account. The more work I do now, the longer we have to endure this lifestyle. To that end, I made a commitment to push through the summer and accelerate the academics to try and graduate as quickly as possible. However, my analogy of sprinting the last 8 miles of a marathon comes with the risk of hitting a wall and not finishing.
The single most impacting bit of legislation that could be passed to address poverty is making health care a right instead of a commodity. More than half of the stipend I get for 20 or so hours of associate instructor work each week goes toward providing my wife and kids with mediocre coverage. Universal health care—or just a University footing the bill—won’t keep us from piling up student loans, but it does keep the roof over our head and puts some food in our bellies.
We are not habitually poor. We are optimistically so. The optimistic poor are people who will have the means to rise above poverty but are fighting through the process to get there.
At some point, I’ll have a job, be it academic or in industry. We’ll get a paycheck, probably with less work than the insane hours I’m putting into this endeavor now. The mountain of student loans will eventually be paid off, as will the rest of our mortgage. For today, though, I have to worry about whether my son’s fifth birthday will come with a present.
