Demographics: White Male, Masters in Electrical and Computer Engineering, Autistic

Tags: Graduate Student, Autism, Alcoholism, Cancer

I'm a little neurodivergent, too, so that might make this whole thing a bit tricky, but I have a mild case of autism. You know, I never knew until a couple of years ago, when I did some counseling. I'm pretty sure that my counselor is right. So that's another thing. It definitely has ramifications and can cause you difficulties and you can tend to have depression issues and this, that, and the other. You really have to consider treatment and shouldn't just ignore it. My father is an example of what happens when you don't get it diagnosed or get it treated. He didn't get diagnosed with anything and  I think he probably had the same thing. He died of alcoholism, ultimately. I mean, he could have been worse, he made it to 74, but you know, his life could have been a little different than it was. It was what it was.

 I was living with two of my siblings after my mom passed away from lung cancer. My two sisters, Sheila and Catherine, are not very stable, they have a different father than me. So I said, “Let me save my not-that-stable sisters from being homeless,” now that we don't have mom's house anymore–they were both back on mom's doorstep and living at mom's place. But after she passed we had to sell that place within whatever the limit was. That was what mom wanted in the will. Sell it, and split the money between everybody. I got them an apartment, I was living with them in this apartment and, Catherine, during the course of that apartment stuff, fell back into alcoholism. For the last nine months of our three years in the apartment, she just stopped paying rent. She was getting scammed. She didn't know which direction was up. This scamming person was having her do all this Bitcoin stuff, and just saying like, "Oh, I promise I'm gonna pay you back." But he was just taking her money. Then, he wrote her a check to somehow ‘prove’ he would pay her back, and the check bounced. So I ended up out of $5,000 throughout all that in rent that she was supposed to pay, which she never paid back. She just kind of went back into another relapse of alcoholism, and then she crashed her car and had no car. And then she was homeless. So she went the whole nine yards. The last I heard from her, she was in a nursing home for physical rehabilitation, since she couldn't walk anymore. So she needed, some rehabilitation. So that didn't help, because now I was guaranteed to end up unable to pay rent by the end of my degree here and I have to pull off some miracles.

Now I'm off of the state insurance as well because I was starting to get last year's taxes finally, at least half done, but I didn't get it done in time. I pretty much just got to get it done myself 'cause my paperwork is such a mess. It's probably part of my illness. It would be just as much difficulty passing this paperwork to an accountant so that they could make sense of it and actually compile it. So I got those little complications. I'm not out of money, but I'm on the way and I tend to worry about these things in advance 'cause it's a whole big mess. They don't just automatically rescue you if you suddenly can't pay rent anymore. You're gonna have to go through all these processes. So currently I'm just emptying out some retirement funds related to my parents' estates and everything. The inherited IRA fund from my father is the thing that's going first, and that's gonna mostly get me to the point of graduation which is coming soon. I'm graduating in May of 2024. And I also have some gold coins and silver bars from my dad. He collected some precious metals, which are a pain in the neck to sell, it’s a full, eight-hour day of driving. I’m not interested in selling them myself. Having to deal with security, mailing, potential scams, whatever. So, I sold some of those to continue having a smooth ride here with the school and not have to scramble and pick up a job and do the classes and the job at the same time on top of commuting.

As most probably do when low on funds, I had some other tricks to save money including keeping the heat or air conditioning lower. This somewhat slowed down my academic excelling perhaps in previous semesters, when I spent most of my time at home. Anyhow, the heat gets set to 66, and the air conditioning is set to 78. I've done 57 for the heat setting before, but I wouldn't be able to get engineering homework done well in that much lower of a temperature, 66 seemed to be the optimal number. I'd work on my laptop from bed with a cover over my legs, instead of at my desktop all-in-one PC at the desk, to deal with the colder temperature. That wasn't the worst sacrifice to make. Once I adapted to it I think it worked out fine, only slightly non-ideal.

 All this to say, I'm pretty good at dealing with food insecurity already. I have habits like avoiding restaurants and places where you're paying for the food service of everything, and you end up spending twice as much as if you made all your own meals. Being a commuter student I've always just bought food with me. I bring lunch and a half at least. When I come onto campus, I stay for the entire day. I'll come as early as 9:30 AM, other times 11:00 or 12:00, and stay until 9:00 PM. I do a bunch of different things and I'm involved in several different campus clubs. So I make an entire day out of it.

Anything that I eat during the day, I brought with me that morning. That saves some money, so I just continued doing that. Since I have that I never got the meal plan and the whole dining hall thing. I mean, I think they're reasonably priced if I had decided to get a meal plan on campus. It might have been more convenient to have done the meal plan thing, with the dining halls and everything. They're already cooked for you and that probably is a beneficial scenario for a lot of students. Especially those heavily loaded with classes.

I don't think I had any issues with academic performance, falling short or anything. I mean, I had a pretty good situation with the two or three frozen dinner things and a box of four veggie burgers. Those are my main meals during the week, besides some smaller stuff. So, I have something that keeps me fueled so my brain can run during those rather, intensive, lectures that we have. 

I still haven't spent any of my Opportunity bucks that I have on campus. I haven't ever gone to the little bagel place in the engineering building 'cause I'm always prepared, like a boy scout. I've always brought my own stuff, which is a money-saving version of everything. I think I got something that just manages to solve things sensibly. I'm not sacrificing my health and well-being for the most part. Luckily I had some of my past experiences that trained me on how to cope well with things.

I decided to start using on-campus resources when I ran out of the SNAP benefits. I am getting some assistance from the programs that are available at Opportunity University. Since they got the word across to me well enough, I knew that they had the university’s fresh food program and the university pantry. It took me a while to find where the university pantry was, but I found it. So that was helping to slow my running out of money thing.  

 I get little things at the university pantry. A couple of cans of vegetables, they also have some frozen meat products. They got some cute little sandwiches from Heritage's that they donated and the little wraps. I got a family-size box of Crispix last time I was there a week or two ago. That was helpful.  It's just a pain in the neck getting to the university pantry sometimes because I'm a commuter student, so I park the closest possible. Then I gotta go all the way down to the Opportunity Apartments area there, go to the university pantry, get some stuff, then carry it around with me for at least half of the day until I get back over towards the engineering building and everything to put it in my car.