If you live near or attend a large university, the real struggle meal is just food from free events on campus.
When I was a grad student I’d show up to every event on campus where I knew there’d be food and fill up a Tupperware or two. Didn’t matter if it was connected to my department or not.
You’re getting the exact same quality of education for introductory classes at a community college, state school, and private school.
I know because I teach the same suite of classes at all 3 as an adjunct. Same book, same syllabus, same schedule, same assignments. The only difference is the price tag, and I’m hardly alone in that.
Actually, scratch that. You’re getting a better education at the community college because the people in charge there bother to remember that I exist and treat me as an equal.
Decades ago I was cook #2 at a retreat center. My boss, cook #1, was a quiet, but kind and competent kinda guy.
He’d show me how to do something, and then give me space to get the job done while he took care of other things.
After a while, we just sort of naturally settled into a rhythm of work. We’d both come in around 5am, get breakfast prepped, and then serve breakfast without needing to say much to each other at all. Then we’d do the dishes, again without needing to talk.
Sometime after that we’d eat, and the two of us would have a good conversation. Rinse and repeat for lunch prep, leaving once the PM crew came in to serve that meal.
The mix of being taught skills, trusted to get things done, and both of us appreciating when to be quiet and when to chat… that was everything. I’ve never had a better boss.
We have to remember that the people making these decisions have no idea what life is like for a poor person. The kinds of payments that would ruin my life and yours are nothing to them.
So, they think we have the ability to afford these payments because they’re damned fools. They don’t expect mass defaults.
Round about 10 years ago I lived alone in a little cabin in the woods. I didn’t have much in the way of money, didn’t need much of it either. Wood stove, books from the library for entertainment.
Shit, I was way calmer and happier when I lived in the woods.