TSELF Youth Award

[Alyssa87]

Who just got her letter from the TRANSGENDER SCHOLARSHIP and EDUCATION LEGACY FUND?

Yeeea, that would be me!

I'm one of less than 20 eligible applicants.
But i think the letter i sent with my application makes me a shoe-in

i'll let u know if they forked over the cash over the Xmas break.
my bday is 12/29 so the scholarship would be an ideal gift.

[Alyssa87]

They have other scholarships and grants avail also. most of the deadlines are in January, so go to the site if u need financial aid for school also ladies.

http://www.tself.org/awards.html

[trannybanger]

That is awesome, you deserve it. Best of luck!

[tgirlzoe]

i thought about applying for it when i was in school but i didn't. one of the requirements was to be out and an activist and i was neither. i certainly didn't want my dormmates finding out i had a penis!

with the (relative) massive number of out and proud tranny boys and female genderqueers on my campus, i figured there'd be a lot more qualified applicants.

i should have done it though.

CONGRATS!

may your student debt be less than mine...

[tgirlzoe]

Oh that's right, and it's Social Services, Health Care, Religious Instruction (all denominations), Teaching and the Law.

I didn't make it into the teaching college at my university, and dropped out instead.

But the out thing was the big one.

[Alyssa87]

wow Zoe u must be real real real!
congrats on being stealth on campus.

anywho thanks a lot. u too mister.banger

[PatrickFromNYC]

You may be young but you are also very wise !
Best of luck Alyssa..

[Realgirls4me]

Congratulations, Alyssa! Great news.

I didn't really know such scholarships and grants aimed at assisting transgender students existed.

[tgirlzoe]

wow Zoe u must be real real real!

And you're not?!? You're gorgeous!


My college record is kind of weird:

* 2002-2003 (17/18.): Went to community college during high school to get ahead, also took AP and College in the High School classes.

* 2003-2004 (18/19): Lived in the guys' dorms. Was still living as a gay boy >.< But I was out as trans to friends (since 2001/16) and dating an FTM, who was also pre-transition (though he far along now). Met my first transitioned person (though he wasn't on T yet, he still had a name change and was fairly well-accepted).

* 2004-2005 (19/20): Didn't go back to university because I was planning to move in with my fiance and change schools. Went to community college again in the meantime. Started hormones in fall of 2004. My fiance broke up with me and I was stranded at my parents' house trying to hide my hormone use from my parents who were strongly against it.

* Summer/Fall 2005 (20): Went back to university, mainly to get aid money to live on. Going Summer was a huge financial mistake as I couldn't get grants and such. Lived off-campus with sympathetic people (primarily ones I met online and begged for a place to stay) a month or so at a time. Homelessness and scholasticism don't mix. I did the entire Summer quarter without books because they made me wait 6 weeks or something to get my financial aid because I was gone for a year. I finally made the legal change before Fall quarter started (Summer was really awkward a few times because of a different legal name than the name I used in class).

* Winter 2005 (21): I finally come up with enough to pay the deposit and move into the dorms. I don't tell Housing or my roommates. I'm trying to finally be normal.

* Spring 2005 (21): The end of my academic career. I dropped out and decided to wait until I was more secure in my life financially and especially emotionally to go back.

~~~

Well, I mean, my roommates just never said anything and I never said anything to Housing about it. I just marked the "F" box and moved in. They weren't the greatest roommates (2bd suite, 4 girls). I never really hung out with them much, just kind of people who happen to live in the same dorm and smoke pot together. I lived there less than six months.

I can't prove that my roommates didn't know I was trans. For all I know, they did and just didn't care. My feeling was that as long as they didn't say anything, that was good enough. I hate talking about it and I especially hate when people treat me differently because of it. I was really stressed that they would find out though, I had nightmares about it. Ugh.

I dropped out of college in 2006, I was 21. I'm 23 now, nearing 24, I would probably go back and change my major to something more profitable but I detest the whole academic system and anyway I'm too far in debt from the first go-around!

[SarahG]

there's a lot of truth to the "typical college student" being the "typical broke college student"- but if you get the basics done (hrt, name change etc) to the point where you can be in stealth & fulltime, it means that by the time you graduate you will have all of your career in order, under a consistent gender & name, from the start which is very very helpful even if you get outted in your field later.

Another benefit is that you can, as a fulltime student, take out private student loans to supplement any financial aid you get. Basically you have to go threw the fasfa shit first, then walk into a bank and get a private loan... generally they'll let you take out $45k minus whatever you get from the feds, every year- and unlike the feds who send money to your school, a private student loan will just give you a check, and not care how you spend it (can be for anything, computers, textbooks, alcohol, prostitutes, housing, food). If you do your homework you can get loans this way where the interest is also tax deductible. The problem is that you'll need a cosigner with decent credit, so if you've been disowned or your parents credit is tanked- you're pretty much out of luck.

It also means starting off with a shitload of debt- all the costs of the degree plus whatever loans you've taken out, and you can't just declare bankruptcy and get rid of it (student debt is binding after the Bush admin reforms), so if you default they'll repo everything you own (there are certain things they can't take, like tools relating to your field, clothing, but I think that's about it- not sure what they'd do if you've spend $30,000 on designer clothes using credit cards right before filing, I doubt you'd be able to keep them) and your wages would be garnished, your credit would be destroyed (in a market where it will be harder to repair it). But they can't, because it's not physically possible, repo surgeries, so if you're willing to lose every possible material possession, your credit, and a significant portion of your future wages (there are rules about how big of a % they can deduct from your pay) then it is theoretically possible to use loans for transitioning & then just default. I really don't advice it though, especially since then if you can't get a job after the fact (because you're trans or because the economy is in the shitfields, or because you never actually finished your degree and have all that debt and no qualifications, or because your credit is shot, and yes some fields care alot about your credit) later on, if you start doing sex work to pay the bills, if you don't declare it (so it can be garnished) you're looking at jail time for more than tax evasion.

Another benefit, if you want to do stealth, is in most states you can get a GED simply by taking enough college courses (they have guidelines as to how many you have to take in each subject to do it this way, but its an alternative). Why is this important? I know more than a few girls, including myself- who can't prove they went to high school because their K-12 district refused to give them a new diploma under the new name. Thus if you go to college, finish it and get a GED & a college degree, you never have to worry about it...

whereas without that, if you apply for a job and mention you finished HS, if the employer wanted to confirm your resume they won't have a way to do so (if an employer called my HS tomorrow the school would say: "we have no idea who you're talking about, no one ever went to this school with that name"-> and then the employer would think you're lying on your resume) unless you show them the original diploma, and the court ruling for the name change.