The Barriers Remain High For Homeless Students Who Want To Go To College

Discussion in 'Off-Topic Discussions' started by Abner, May 30, 2016.

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  1. Abner

    Abner Well-Known Member

  2. Bruce

    Bruce Moderator

    If I were homeless, I'd concentrate on finding work, banking some cash, and getting a place to live before I worried about college.
     
  3. edowave

    edowave Active Member

    NBC news did a story on a homeless father and daughter some years ago. The father lost his job in the recession while the daughter was still in high school, and they were living in a van. Throughout the entire news story, the daughter was wearing a shirt from Stetson University. The next day, Stetson University told her if she applies and get in, they will cover her tuition, room, and board. I thought that was very nice of them.
     
  4. SteveFoerster

    SteveFoerster Resident Gadfly Staff Member

    Classy, and good PR. Good move.
     
  5. Johann

    Johann Well-Known Member

    Yes - Stetson U. did that, all right. Two daughters, actually. Here's the story.

    Stetson homeless 60 Minutes: Stetson University offers scholarships to homeless students on 60 Minutes - tribunedigital-orlandosentinel

    The daughter wearing the Stetson shirt (Arielle) was in 9th grade at the time, so I figure she probably finished high school in 2015. I hope things went well, that she's at University and that her Dad is back working.

    J.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jun 4, 2016
  6. Johann

    Johann Well-Known Member

    Sorry - not two daughters. One son, one daughter.

    J.
     
  7. Abner

    Abner Well-Known Member

    That's great. Many people in this country are living one paycheck away from potential disaster. If they have no family or friends that can help them in a jam, they may suddenly find themselves without a home.
     
  8. Johann

    Johann Well-Known Member

  9. Neuhaus

    Neuhaus Well-Known Member

    I can't speak to this family's situation. But I understand where Bruce is coming from.

    If I lost my job, house and stuff I would go out and find a job. Any job. I would dig ditches. I would work a cash register. I would do anything to provide a physical home to my family.

    Obviously disability could complicate the issue as well.

    But I do think back to a lot of these TV specials about people who lost their jobs in the recession on 2009 and, years later, still can't find work. Or the one about the hedge fund manager who ended up delivering pizzas or the bond trader who ended up waiting tables.

    The thing is that there are a lot of rungs in between Hedge Fund Manager and pizza delivery. Edward Jones is hiring financial advisors non-stop. It's a decent gig and the early stages come with paid training (not that you'd necessarily need paid training if you were a hedge fund manager). A good friend of mine got it after he got tired of selling cars for a living. These are companies that are constantly hiring in virtually every area of the country.

    Then they'll show some guy who wakes up, visits monster.com for a while, sends out a few resumes and then sits back on the couch and waits for the kids to get home from school. I don't think it is laziness. But I do think it is a mindset that one falls into after a period of unemployment. There is one guy on LinkedIn who sends me an InMessage every week. The same form message about how he can literally do any job for any company. I can't imagine I'm the only one he sends this message to. Once I actually responded with a job that seemed to match his LinkedIn profile and sent him a link to apply. I checked the queue for a month and never saw anything from him. But I would wager he sends those messages out every day and tells people that he's contacting HR people every day looking for a job. Never mind that these messages will never get him work. Never mind that he isn't actually applying for work just making a halfhearted attempt at "networking." I don't think he's lazy. I think he allowed the hopelessness to drag him into an unproductive pattern.

    I'm not saying that former aeronautical engineers should be applying for work at Burger King if they don't get a hit on their resume after two weeks. But I am saying that there are a lot of things that one might consider doing to try to slow your fall. I'm sure that hindsight is 20-20 in many of these cases. And maybe people really have done all they can reasonable do and it was just unavoidable. But I also know that no work would be beneath me if my kids were living in a van.
     
  10. 03310151

    03310151 Active Member


    I was laid off in 2008 at the start of the recession. I got two jobs (my wife was a stay at home Mom with our middle son). One I worked part-time out at the military base. The other part-time gig was at Wal-Mart. I chose the inventory specialist job as it paid .76 more per hour. It was a pretty difficult job, very physical and fast moving at times. My supervisor was an ex gang banger who had worked his way up to be a supervisor. He was so proud to show me his smart phone, but had tears in his eyes when he told me that with the money he was making he could get an apartment and was able to get full custody of his son. Maybe the guy spamming you has had the "hopelessness drag him into an unproductive pattern" or it could be that he's just lazy.


    Most homelessness is from either drugs/alcohol addiction or mental health related and often times its both. The myth of homeless people being just down on their luck working people who got shafted by the system, is a myth. There are some like that, but their numbers are tiny compared to the mental health/substance dependent homelessness. It's needless hand-wringing to worry about college for the homeless. There are other things, already mentioned, that are higher up on the list than signing up the local meth head to English 101.


    And, the "barriers" for anyone wanting to go to college are high. That's why it has value (although even that value is slipping).
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jun 7, 2016
  11. Johann

    Johann Well-Known Member

    That's the most memorable sentence I've seen in my years on DI. It is because of hopelessness and perceived futility that many seek escape from a sad reality - burying themselves in activities of which nothing comes - like spending way too much time on the Internet, day after day. I should know... :sad:

    J.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jun 7, 2016
  12. Neuhaus

    Neuhaus Well-Known Member

    Is it possible this guy on LinkedIn is lazy? Certainly. But this isn't an 18 year old kid slacking off from his Shake Shack job over the summer. This is a guy with a 20-30 year professional career that shows progressive responsibility. Job gap aside, he'd be a strong candidate. Did he suddenly get lazy? Maybe. Maybe he went into early retirement mode without the financial means. Or, just maybe, this guy held out hope for a while and let himself fall into a pit of despair. It's very possible he IS working. Maybe he's doing the same thing you did but didn't feel a part-time gig at Wal Mart or Popeyes would look good on his LinkedIn profile. I also think that he mistakenly believes that sending me the exact same canned email weekly is a meaningful form of communication with HR and can replace actually applying for a job or even showing up at the few places that don't get freaked out when you physically knock in their door to inquire about work.

    Keep in mind, I'm 36. I have young kids. Is my "do whatever it takes" instinct going to be as strong when my kids are grown, out of the house, the mortgage is paid and I can scrape by on my wife's salary? Yeah, that sounds kind of lazy, but it really just reflects a shift in priorities. The guy on LinkedIn is likely not living in a van. So he seems comfortable not taking the "work I do to avoid living in a van" sort of steps that we outlined.

    When I got out of the Navy I threw up. Literally got off the plane in PA and lost my lunch on the sidewalk. I was unemployed. It hadn't hit me until that moment. Yeah, I was a veteran. An unemployed veteran. I applied everywhere. I applied for every level of HR job I could find. And, only a week in, I began applying to crappy non-HR jobs too. i applied as a low level HR assistant at the hospital hoping to get my foot in the door. I applied as a janitor at the VA figuring Id rather be a well paid janitor than a low paid HR Assistant. A lot of that panic was unfounded. I got a job a few weeks later as a recruiter. But sometimes I do wonder what I actually would have done if I hadnt. Would I have actually worked as a janitor? Would I have tried to use it as a stepping stone or just whined about how the Navy and CTU lied to me about a better future? Don't know.

    But this is all a long winded way of expressing my point which is that I think the human psyche is a bit more complicated than just being either "lazy" or "not lazy."
     
  13. Maniac Craniac

    Maniac Craniac Moderator Staff Member

    This is the sense I get from experience, though I'm not currently aware of any data. I wouldn't let any of my trusted friends or family members be homeless, so long as they kept earnestly trying to pull out of their rut, and vice versa. I can't imagine just how much would have to go wrong for me to be completely out of options. Not that it couldn't happen. To let myself think it couldn't happen is to allow myself to become dangerously complacent.

    That said, once a person gets to that point, bouncing back is extremely difficult. Let's say I ruin my life over the next 6 months and lose everything. By the 7th month, I learn my lesson and decide to never go down that path again. Then what do I do? How do I get a job when I have no clean clothes, no reliable shower and no permanent address? How do I get a call back from an employer when I don't even have a phone for them to call me back on?

    6 months of bad decisions and I might not be able to get back to living a 'normal' life for decades, if ever. This is something I can also comment on from experience. Not my own experience, since I've never been homeless, but my experience in having conversations with homeless people I meet around my area. The story usually revolves around some unforeseeable tragedy that leads to depression that leads to self-medication and then the slippery slope that leads to eating from garbage pails and begging for spare change. Some of these are absolutely wonderful, intelligent people who want to earn their keep and contribute to society, but they just don't know how to go about it.

    Are you familiar with "learned helplessness"? It's an instinct that nearly all animals have, including humans like you and humanoid reptilians like me. In short, after you quickly exhaust a great amount of energy to escape from a troubling situation, your brain tells you to stop fighting and conserve your energy. The survival advantage for doing so is pretty clear, but it also can backfire and cause you to miss genuine opportunities for escape.

    I don't consider laziness, in general, to be a virtue. However, it is an instinct that we have been programmed with that is more difficult for some people in some situations to overcome than others. Also, depression- a serious mental health condition that is often difficult or impossible to control- can easily be mistaken for laziness by those who are quick to judge.
     
  14. Neuhaus

    Neuhaus Well-Known Member

    Pretty much a thumbs up to everything Maniac Craniac has said.

    Lengthy employment gaps tend to be an HR red flag. But not the same way they used to be. Today it isn't uncommon for a woman, or a man, to take time off to raise kids until they are school age. Then they come back with gusto and rock the working world. As a working professional, married to another working professional, with kids I can tell you that I'll probably see an increase in my own productivity when I no longer have to worry about daycare and babysitter drama. Even if school closes for a 7-9 year old I can work from home while my kids are playing quietly or reading books. I can leave them alone in another room with more confidence that they aren't wrapping the cord from the blinds around their necks, licking outlets or choking on toys.

    So employment gaps aren't the resume poison they once were. People have also become a bit more creative about how they fill those gaps. Were you an independent consultant because you broke out on your own and just got tired of buying healthcare on the exchange? Or were you unemployed and formed that LLC to fool me? I have no way of knowing.*

    But I, and many of my colleagues, are generally more sympathetic than some of our more senior and more cantankerous colleagues. Of course I can't apply for the job for you. If I send you a link and urge you to apply you might consider that I will probably at least bring you in for a first round interview. But I cannot physically apply for the job to get you to that step. That's when it is especially sad. It's like seeing someone drowning in the ocean and not grabbing the life preserver you threw them. You could judge them harshly for not wanting to live. Or you can acknowledge that they've simply reached the point of no return and that saving them will require someone to physically pluck them from the water at that point.

    *One of my colleagues at another company requires anyone who is self-employed to provide copies of their tax returns to verify that they were, in fact, working. She has always required it. While it does tend to keep the liars at bay it has also resulted in at least 6 actual former consultants, people who had done consulting work for her company, telling her to go screw and leaving her with no backup plan to fill the job.
     
  15. Bruce

    Bruce Moderator

    This is true, it's exceedingly rare to come across someone who's homeless due to no fault/choice of their own, the overwhelming majority are substance dependent and/or mentally ill. For whatever reason(s), alcohol is the substance of choice for the homeless around here, we don't find many of them overdosing on heroin.

    Based on nothing more than my observations and opinion, it seems as though families are far more tolerant of opiate addiction than alcoholism. Most OD's we have are people with physical homes, albeit usually their parents, but they may OD outside the home. The homeless encampments we have are littered with empty liquor containers, it's rare to find any evidence of drug abuse.

    The ironic thing is, I've seen chronic alcoholics live on the streets for many years, while opiate addiction usually takes someone out within a couple of years, they either get clean or die. If anyone needs immediate treatment, tough love if you will, it's opiate addicts, but families seem to want to take the ostrich approach and hope it goes away. It never does.
     
  16. Neuhaus

    Neuhaus Well-Known Member

    I wonder if that has anything to do with the relatively discreet nature of opiate use. We watched my father's drinking get progressively worse. It was on display for his entire family. Had he been using opiates he likely would have been discreet. He would have needed to be discreet. The climate at his employer at the time was fairly tolerant of alcohol abuse but he would have lost his job and, likely, his freedom if they discovered he was abusing opiates.

    In a situation like that the family might be unaware of the abuse until the OD. Someone abusing alcohol, on the other hand, it probably starts out social. Then it gets a bit more concerning. Then there are at least a handful of events where you can no longer deny that the person has a problem.

    I had a client once who was a physician. His licensed had been suspended immediately after he wrapped his car around a mailbox and his blood test came back looking like an insurance company formulary. Court sent him to us. This guy was absolutely livid that they sent him to a place "with junkies." He was popping pills in a Lexus not shooting up in a trailer park. So he figured he was in a different class (pun intended) entirely. Wife showed up for a visit about two weeks into his treatment and was showing some classic withdrawal symptoms. Without hubby's magic prescription pad they were both left dry (without the "high"). Eventually the two of them pulled it together. But, man, there was a mental block in this guy's head when it came to acknowledging that opiate addiction is the same, rich or poor.

    He was lucky that no one had been hurt and that society intervened before he, or his wife, ODed. Had he been an alcoholic, on the other hand, I suspect a few occurrences of him puking on the front steps of their posh house in front of their posh neighbors would have prompted family and friends to step in.

    Opiate use can be extremely clean and non-disruptive to life (at first). Alcohol gets pretty ugly pretty fast. And a lot of people are willing to let something go if it isn't so ugly.
     
  17. Maniac Craniac

    Maniac Craniac Moderator Staff Member

    Well, that's a relief. Disagreeing with you is exhausting. :silly:
     
  18. Neuhaus

    Neuhaus Well-Known Member

    My wife has said the same thing...hmmm.

    She also has a standing rule against seeing any movie or television show which features anything about the Navy while I am present. We also have a family rule about not ever watching anything about the NYPD with my father after he broke his television during an episode of Blue Bloods. So perhaps it's genetic.
     

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