When Lauren Schandevel arrived at the University of Michigan for her freshman year, she was struck by how wealthy all her classmates appeared to be.
“Just wealthy in ways that I couldn’t even imagine,” Schandevel recalls. Students had fashionable clothes and well-connected and powerful parents.
Schandevel had grown up in the north of Detroit. Her family was working class and she had gotten scholarships and a few loans to make attending the admirable state school a reality. When she got to campus, she didn’t think much about her status as a low-income student. Sure, when her bill came due, she’d have a bit of panic--- would this be the semester the financial aid fell through?
Then, during Schandevel’s junior year, the university’s student government put out a campus affordability guide, written with the average Michigan student in mind-but it’s worth noting that the average student at the school has a family income of about $150,000 per year.
The advice didn’t go over well with low-income students on campus. “A lot of the advice was like: fire your maid or sell your car. I was frustrated(受挫的) by this guide, and I was seeing others frustrated by it,” says Schandevel.
She decided to make her own affordability guide, and she fired up a Google doc and titled it “Being Not-Rich at UM: A Guide“. She added her own tips---the things that helped her survive and budget. But there was so much she didn’t know, so she left the sharing settings(分享设置) open for other students to jump in and edit the online document.
It took off. Hundreds of students started adding their tips about how to navigate college when you are paying your way through college. Today, Schandevel’s crowd- sourced guide stretches more than 100 pages. It includes advice about jobs, housing, teachers and financial aid---even many great tips on where to find free food on campus. The doc’s popularity helped her accept her economic status and gave her control over her life.
“Economic status is such an invisible identity, and there are no places on campus where we can really find each other,” says Schandevel. “It brought together people who had experienced this before, and students knew they were not alone.”
【小题1】How did Schandevel probably feel in her first year of college?| A．Very excited | B．A little curious. | C．Very confident | D．A little upset. |
| A．Ways to live a happy life. | B．Tips on how to become rich |
| C．Advice on how to save money | D．Ideas about how to become creative |
| A．Ambiguous | B．cautious | C．disapproving | D．positive |
| A．The tips are well-accepted | B．The tips are from the crowd |
| C．The source of finance is abundant | D．The online document is crowded |
| A．It brings people in the same ecnomic situation together |
| B．It helps her improve her family’s living conditions. |
| C．It serves as a reminder of keeping to a strict budget |
| D．It offered financial aid to low-income students. |
