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At 19, I was stuck.
My daughter was approaching the end of the first year of her
life, and mixed with my grief over the loss of her infancy was
my grief of the end of my maternity leave. What was I going to
do for income once my employment insurance ran out?
My job choices with
only a high school education were severely limited and none of them were family-friendly,
nor would they pay the bills. I listed the reasons why college
or university weren't options for me: by graduation, school would
leave me with a small mortgage worth of student debt; my mother
had been a university student while I was a child, and she'd
always been stressed and tired; if I went to school all day,
when I returned home, instead of leaving work at work, I'd have
a pile of stressful schoolwork to take care of. I was heartbroken
by the idea of leaving my daughter in daycare for hours every
day after our peaceful year of bonding at home together.
Stuck between a rock
and a hard place, I found another way out.
When my daughter turned one, I started taking full-time
distance education courses from Athabasca University. I lived
off student loans and did coursework during her naptime and after
she was in bed. After about a year of this, shortly after her
second birthday, she started at daycare, and I've just applied
to my local university as a transfer student in sociology with
my eyes on the social work program, and though I'm still waiting
to hear back from them, I'm confident that I will get in
if not right away, then in time.
I'm stubborn, and I've
learned that stubbornness is an asset. If I wasn't stubborn,
I wouldn't have gotten this far, and I'll have to be stubborn
to finish. I've come to realize that there is no real difference
between stubbornness and determined persistence.
I wish I could give
Canadian mothers a list of resources
and send them on their way; unfortunately, most resources
that pertain to student mamas are provincial rather than federal
responsibilities, so they will vary from province to province
and I can only speak in general terms.
Mentors
find one! Can you ask around at your school, daycare, or community
centres to see if anyone knows a student mama who knows the ropes?
Does anyone want to exchange support, meals, or child care?
Childcare - Is there a campus daycare? What
are its rates for students? Research your local childcare subsidy
program is there a wait list? If so, is there a way to
bypass this wait list? (For example, in Ontario if you need child
care in order to leave welfare and go to school, you bypass the
childcare subsidy wait list.) Get on the wait list, even if it
seems too long to be useful to you. Find out how much your student
loans will cover.
Housing - Does
your school have family housing? What are the rent rates like?
Can you get subsidized housing from the city? Get on all the
wait lists you can, even if they seem too long.
Know your profs - A fellow student mama recommended
to me making sure your profs are aware that you're a mother and
that you may be called away in case of emergency or when needed.
Make sure to participate in class so they know who you are. She
explains that if you can't make a deadline, they'll be more understanding
and less likely to think you were out partying.
Benefits
What kind of health insurance are you looking at? Does your province
have a program for low-income families, and if so, how does it
compare? What about other benefits, like a bus pass?
Student loans
Oh boy, I don't even want to look at my provincial-federal
student loans. Here's the ugly truth you're going to be
in a lot of debt. But it's going to be worth it. Apply for the
loans in your province (like OSAP, ALIS, etc). Keep in mind,
the amount that you have to pay back is capped, so there's no
sense in trying to get a job to reduce your loans by a couple
hundred or thousand dollars; it won't make a real difference.
You'll also qualify for some grants that you won't have to pay
back. Between it all, this should cover your tuition and your
(modest) living expenses, but not without a good chunk of debt.
Need-based awards, bursaries, and scholarships
Apply for whatever you qualify for. If you ever
find yourself in a tight spot financially, go to your student
finances office and apply for bursaries. (Ask if your name will
be included in newsletters that are sent out to donors and potential
donors, and if you're not comfy with that, ask that it be removed.)
Advocate for yourself.
Always be polite but assertive and firm. Get on all the wait
lists. Research to find out things they might not tell you. Be
stubborn; you have every right to go to school, and you can and
will succeed."
----------------Janice Winkler
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Born and raised throughout
Southern Ontario,
Canada, 20-year-old Janice
Winkler and her
family live in London, where
she intends to continue her education at the University of Western
Ontario and envisions her future as a social worker, librarian,
writer, lactation consultant, famous sociologist, and radical
mama.
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