I, like the majority of you reading this blog, am a typical American. My true identity is not important, you can call me Miss E (I'm NOT a Mr.). Like most Americans, I attended public schools for the first eighteen years of my life, paid for by our taxes. In every way, I seemed like one who would accomplish great things, at least according to the teachers I've had. I graduated in the top 10% of my class, and won awards for my top performance in mathematics. And, of course, everyone I had ever met by that point, from family to teachers, had pressured me into going to college.
When I was at college, much had changed. Like everyone else there, I was there to get a degree. I started off as an engineering major, because for most of my life, my family had told me that engineering is what they want me to do. You're good at math, and you like money. Sure, that's what *they* say, but was I really as good at math as everyone said up to that point?
Well, it didn't really matter if I was good or not, because I couldn't pass most tests at the college level. It wasn't a matter of not trying hard enough, like it is for most people who've got so drunk the night before at a frat party that they had forgotten who they are. I came to the test well rested and sober, passed it in, and got it back with a big fat red F across the top. It took until my second year of college before anyone else thought that there could be something wrong with me, and I was referred to get tested for learning disorders.
I was formally diagnosed with two learning disorders. One of them is similar to dyslexia. I confuse symbols that look too similar to me (such as + and X), and will end up writing them wrong on the paper. In high school and before, mistakes like that were outright ignored, or circled with a "-1" next to them. The same tests that I had earned a 93% on in high school got me nothing but a big fat F in college, because the answers were wrong. It also distracted me to write notes, because I couldn't write at anywhere near the speed I would have needed to. Unless I slow down my writing considerably and proofread my work, I'm constantly making errors where I skip letters or end words with the beginning letter of the next word. ("The dog" becomes "thd og") My other learning disorder is a memory disorder. I have a near photographic memory for purely visual things, such as locations of places and graphs of functions. But, I have limited recall on non-visual things, like practically everything that we had to memorize and regurgitate back out on tests. Unless a test were multiple choice, true/false, fill in the blank (with a word bank), or similar formats where my choices are spelled out for me, there is a very low chance that I'd be able to come up with the correct answer.
Since engineering didn't work out for me, and practically everyone in my life had told me that I'd be a "loser" or a "nothing" if I didn't get a college degree, I kept changing majors to try to find something that I was capable of passing at a college level. I essentially wasted six years of my life, because nothing worked for me there. I was able to earn an associate's degree in liberal arts at a local community college, after transferring the credits that I was able to pass, and taking a few additional courses, which were luckily tested in a way that I was able to pass.
Now, you're probably wondering, who paid for all of this? I had to take out loans to cover my six years of schooling, which were for $35,000. Plus interest over the six years I was attending school, that's almost $50,000. Because the careers available to me now are the same ones that were available to me on my eighteenth birthday, you can say that I've spent that money for nothing. I would be fine living on the income from my current job, but there is a problem. The creditors want their money back, plus interest, and because they're student loans, I can't just file for bankruptcy. Because of this, I'm forced to choose between being a burden on my family or taxpayers for the rest of my life (living under other people's roofs, in a shelter, or on welfare), getting the money in a practical, yet illegal and/or immoral way (stealing, drug dealing, prostitution), or getting the money in an impractical and utterly ridiculous way.
The whole irony of this situation is that if I didn't listen to my family, teachers, or any other older adults in my life, I'd have the same career choices that I do now, but wouldn't be in debt. Even if all went as planned, many people are without jobs because of the economic situation. Rather than pressuring young people to go to college when they can't pay for it, and there are no jobs for them when they get out, shouldn't we be trying to improve our educational system so that there are better choices even for those who only make it to high school? When we pressure young people to go to college when they can't legitimately pay for it, we set ourselves up to have to support a country full of people in debt. And when we are negligent of students' problems, whether they are learning disorders, problems at home, mental illnesses, or anything else, those students will slip through the cracks, make it to college, and have to answer no less than 700 times: Why are you here? You should have learned (insert concepts here) in high school! How did you even pass high school? Not again!
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I hate waste. Whether it's wasted time, like my years of school, or wasted resources, like most of what is thrown in the landfill, I've always hated the concept of waste. About ten years ago, I worked at my first job in a bakery. Every night shift ended with throwing away all the day old bread. At my home, a loaf of bread often sat on the table for a week and was still good, yet we still had to throw away bread that was only a day old. There are millions of starving people, even in my own country. With permission from my boss (under the condition that I can't tell anyone where I got it), I took all the loaves of bread that would have went into the dumpster and brought it to a homeless shelter.
Every day, millions of things are thrown away for no other reason than that they are no longer of use to someone. It's one thing if they are no longer of use to anyone, but a lot of these things include things that could be given away or sold to someone who needs and/or wants them, or recycled for their raw materials and made into something new. Then it hit me - the landfills are literally a gold mine of recyclable materials. Most metals, such as aluminum, copper, or steel, could be melted and reshaped countless times, restoring use to items such as cans, pipes, or metal sheeting which could no longer be used by the original owners. Rather than just taking up space and being a waste, new life is breathed into these materials.
Most of these things are better off not even reaching the landfills. Many things, such as old clothes, books, or collectibles, should just be given away or sold to a new owner. Old metal can be recycled into new metal items. Certain types of plastic could also be recycled.
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Because my creditors still want their money, and there's plenty of things that get thrown out every day that should be recycled, my goal is to raise $50,000 from recycling items that others can't use anymore and are willing to give to me.
In states that have a bottle deposit law, such as Connecticut and Massachusetts, it will take one million cans to reach my goal amount. In my home state of Rhode Island, it is more profitable to recycle scrap metal obtained here than our cans. (Obtaining 75 pounds of aluminum cans will take a lot longer than obtaining an old aluminum sink, for example)
If you would like to help:
1. If you are an educator or parent, or thinking of becoming one, the best thing you can do to help is to prevent this problem from happening to another child. Pay attention to your kids! This doesn't go just for learning disorders, but other issues such as depression, drug use, issues at home or at school, etc. When a problem is diagnosed as soon as possible, it could be treated before it turns into a big problem. In my case, if I had been diagnosed with my learning disorders sometime before adulthood, I wouldn't have racked up $50,000 in debt trying to go to school.
2. If you live in CT or MA, I want your cans! No, don't mail the cans directly to me, as that'd probably cost more in postage than they are worth. Instead, organize a can drive. If you are in school, encourage your teachers or clubs to start one, and when you get a significant amount of them, I could arrange to pick them up.
3. If you are a business owner in RI, and you come across junk metal that you just wished someone would take off your hands, please contact me. I can drive to your business and pick it up.
4. If you live too far (basically anywhere else), feel uncomfortable meeting me in person, or for any other reason, you would rather just give cash, I accept PayPal. In the spirit of this website, I ask that any money that you send to me be obtained by selling or recycling something that you don't need or want.
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