Youth Radio - Topic: Marketplace

New Laws Aim To Help People Get Jobs After Getting Arrested

brett — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 12:34:22 -0700

Originally broadcast on Marketplace, April 11, 2013

By: Ashley Williams

Seventeen year-old Andrew is filling out a job application for a Jamba Juice in Oakland, California. He’s making his way through the basics, filling out his name and contact information. However question five posed a challenge. It was a yes or no checkbox which read, “Have you ever been convicted of a crime?”

“I will check yes,” said Andrew, who requested anonymity for this story. When he was fourteen, a high school freshman, he took a gun to school. It is a shocking act for many, especially in the wake of the Newtown, Connecticut shootings, but Andrew says he did it to be cool. Three years later he is haunted by that decision.

In the space below the checkbox where it asks for specifics, Andrew scrawled “weapon charges.” It’s pretty easy to imagine, what an employer would think reading those two words. Little did Andrew know, they are words he could have kept to himself, because in California and many other states, young people who are processed through the juvenile court system, are never “convicted.” Instead, they are “adjudicated.”

Rachel Johnson-Farias, a lawyer at the East Bay Community Law Center in Berkeley, said that adjudication is basically a fancy word for when a court finds allegations to be true. Johnson-Farias explained that while the difference between those two words is slight, it matters when filling out job applications. When asked if you’ve been convicted of a crime, “If you don't have any adult convictions, you can say ‘no’,” said Johnson-Farias.

However, in some states, like Iowa, juvenile records are public, meaning that juvenile offenders should check “yes.” And even in California it could be a “yes,” if the application asks about arrests instead of convictions. Confused yet? Many places have eliminated this type of checkbox altogether with laws called Ban the Box.

“Essentially, it forbids employers asking about a person’s criminal record,” explained Newark, New Jersey City Council Member Ronald Rice. He wrote the city’s Ban the Box law, which prevents employers from asking about records until after they make a tentative job offer. 43 cities and counties and seven states have passed similar laws. Newark’s is the most sweeping.

A study in the journal Pediatrics finds that nearly a third of adults in this country have been arrested by age 23, and Rice argues that pre-screening applicants for criminal history creates a permanent underclass. “Continually penalizing people (without giving) them the opportunity to apply for work,” said Rice, “Is really anti American, but it’s also anti business.”

Anti-business because the whole economy suffers when people can’t find jobs, argued Councilmember Rice. But imagine you’re an employer who learns at the very end of a hiring process that your top candidate committed rape or murder. “You look at that,” said George Allen from the Seattle Chamber of Commerce, “And you’re like oh my gosh could this be safe for my customers, or in some cases for my employees?”

The Seattle Chamber of Commerce opposed early drafts of a citywide Ban the Box proposal, because of costs and risks. For example, what if an employer rescinded a job offer after learning about an applicant’s criminal record? Allen said, “That applicant could turn around and sue the employer for unlimited emotional distress, and we just felt that that was too heavy a hammer.”

After meeting with resistance, Seattle lawmakers released a new Ban the Box proposal, which Allen said strikes a better balance. If the law goes through, Seattle employers will have more control, and applicants with criminal records might have a better chance at starting over. 17 year-old Andrew says it’s all about redemption.

“That never was really me,” said Andrew, “You can’t really hold a person’s past against them because the person could be different.

Recognizing people’s capacity for change may have something to do with why lawmakers in eight more states -- from California to New Jersey -- are considering statewide Ban the Box laws, trying to figure out how much a person’s past should affect their future.

Getting Halloween Right Amid Geisha, Indian, and Pimp Costumes

rgee — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 12:11:56 -0700

This story aired on Marketplace, 10/30/12.

By Malachi Segers

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For young adults hunting for a last minute Halloween costume, it's often really hard to walk the line between cool and offensive. There's quite a bit of offensive out there.

I headed to a big Halloween chain in Berkeley, California to check out the options. Sixty seconds. That's how long it took me to find the first questionable costume: "Mexican Man,"includes sombrero, mustache, and pancho.

That's right. The Halloween costume was actually called Mexican Man. I asked shopper Marisol Rodriguez, who happens to be Mexican-American, "Is this weird?"

"I find it offensive when folks, especially privileged people, walk around being a Mexican for a day-- not really knowing the social issues that come with that," said Rodriguez.

I found lots of borderline insulting costumes in the store. Native-American get ups with beads and feathers. Slinky Geisha outfits. Afros and high-top fades. And an entire section of pimp costumes, some of which I showed to customer Leah Aguiler... like the Supa Mack Daddy and the Deluxe Afro Wig.

"Well I'm a teacher. I think that it promotes stereotypes, not positive stereotypes," said Aquiler.

Leading up to Halloween, Aguiler asked her third grade students to consider one thing before choosing a costume.

"What image are you projecting?"

So I wondered if Halloween retailers take things like this into account.

"Spirit Halloween is the largest Halloween specialty retailer on the planet," said Crystal Baxter, a spokesperson for Spirit Halloween. I asked her what it means to sell a costume called --and I kid you not -- "Pimpin' Da Hos?'

"It's Halloween and you know it's a trend that the customers want. And it's the one day a year you can dress up and be whoever you want," said Baxter.

"But don't they play on stereotypes and kind of further those stereotypes?"

"Umm, I'm sorry I have to take a break."

Baxter referred me to Spirit's legal department for any further questions. And while yes, I have lots of questions about how to avoid insulting people on Halloween, legal is not likely to help. So I picked up the phone.

Andrew Ti runs the blog, Yo, Is This Racist?

"If you have to ask, it's usually racist," said Ti.

But even Ti gets it wrong sometimes.

"I'm Asian, and I thought it'd be really funny to order from the internet, essentially like a racist Charlie Chan costume, telling people I was a quote unquote Chinaman," he said.

Ti says he wore it to be ironic, trying to call attention to the blatantly racist costume, but many people at the Halloween party thought he was mocking Asian people.

"I realized then that sometimes that kind of satire can go over people's head and really give you the exact opposite of what you were hoping for," he said.

Okay so, Halloween is not about nuance...which is exactly why my colleague Ike Sriskandarajah argues not to overthink things.

"Oh it get's tough. If we have to be racially specific, like to constrain ourselves to our own heritage for Halloween. I don't know what Sri Lankan historical figure I'm going to be," he said.

Halloween can get complicated quickly. Perhaps the best piece of advice I've heard, is to think ahead. Like try to imagine yourself wearing an African Princess costume at a Halloween party and actually meeting someone from Africa. Awkward right?

Clocked In: Betting On 16 Weeks To A Job

squevedo — Fri, 31 Aug 2012 16:11:13 -0700

By: Ross Andrews

This story aired on Marketplace 9/6/12.

US manufacturing boasts the highest combined wages and benefits of any economic sector, but according to the Manufacturing Institute, more than 600,000 factory jobs went unfilled last year due to the skills gap. That group has been working on a solution in the form of a training program called Right Skills Now which boasts an impressive promise to young job seekers -- 16 weeks to a job.

Katie Christian is one of the first female students to test out the program near Carson City, Nevada. Before enrolling in Right Skills Now, the bubbly 29-year-old mother of one had a bunch of different jobs.

“I was a security guard at the Marine Corps base," said Christian, “and I also have been to culinary school. I love it, but it’s a passion and a hobby, not a job for life.”

A job for life is a lot to ask of any employment program, let alone one that only lasts four months. But Right Skills Now transported Christian into the machine shop at GE’s Bentley Nevada facility, and she loves the work so much, she says she could do it for 40 years.

Jonathan Begley is the executive director of Dream It Do It Nevada, the organization implementing the Nevada training program. He said, "Our role in this whole thing is to take people from the unemployment lines and to connect them with employment quickly.”

Dream It Do It goes into community colleges with a different model. Classes are designed with an actual job in mind. Big employers like General Electric and smaller local companies are part of the mix. Students get a crash course in the basic skills, splitting time between the classroom and a paid internship on a factory floor.

“Industry has really come up to the plate and said, 'These are the types of workers that we need,'" said Begley. "There’s an immediate demand among manufacturers for skilled CNC operators."

CNC stands for Computer Numerical Control -- basically really expensive machines that are essential to factory work -- and being able to run one, makes a person pretty employable.

Jim Flemming is the plant manager at GE's Bentley Nevada facility, where Katie Christian works. He’s excited about a pipeline of CNC talent. “If you look around the tool room itself,” Flemming explained, “you have about 20 pieces of equipment, most of them manual, run by 8 different guys who have been here for 35-40 years. One by one these folks are gonna be going away.”

But at GE they’re not going away yet. Which is one of the sticking points of Right Skills Now. It doesn’t solve every company’s immediate need.

Flemming has been impressed with Christian’s work, but he doesn’t have a job for her. Christian currently works as a temp, and under GE rules, she has a year to get hired before she’ll be forced to leave. When asked about the prospect of losing her job, Christian was unfazed.

When she enrolled in Right Skills Now, Christian said she wanted to know where she fit in when it came to the working world, and even if her current position is temporary, she says she's achieved that goal. If GE isn't able to hire her, Christian says she take her CNC skills and borrow a line from Ginger Rogers. "I'll pick myself up, dust myself off, and start all over again," sang Christian. Accept this time, she plans to do it with a career as a CNC operator somewhere on her immediate horizon.

Odd Jobs At The DNC

rgee — Tue, 04 Sep 2012 12:29:25 -0700

By Sayre Quevedo

This story also aired on Marketplace.

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On a mission to find the most lucrative jobs for young folks at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina, I began awkwardly asking every young person I saw, “How much money are you making right now?” I found volunteers, making what volunteers make, nothing. I also found crossing guards making 18 dollars an hour. These were the kind of jobs you expect to find at a major political event like this: coordinators, greeters, and support staff.

Outside the convention hall, the hustles got a little more interesting. I met Chris Miller thanks to his incredibly enthusiastic glad-handing. “Hey! What’s up?” he called out to me. “Oh my goodness, you look like you’re famished! Please, come down to Rock Bottom and grab something to eat. Get ten percent off.” Miller stuffed a restaurant coupon into my hand.

The 24 year-old waiter and his colleague were dressed in all black and baking in the 90 degree midday heat. They were working their collective tails off, interrupting my interview to catch people passing by and hit them with their sales pitch. How much were they making for all this? “Well, right now? We’re making $2.13 an hour,” said Miller, “but he’ll [our manager] probably compensate us whenever we get back, depending on how long we’ve been out here.”

Compensate, meaning a free meal. But for a guy getting paid $2.13 an hour without tips, Miller seemed to be genuinely enjoying life. He even broke out into song. A theme-appropriate, ‘America the Beautiful,’ with more soul than most people can even muster in an air-conditioned room. Did I mention it was hot?

Not ten steps away, Tre Randleman was hocking shiny buttons with a very familiar face on them. It’s this guy a lot of the DNC folks seem to like. Yeah, okay, it’s Obama. When I asked her about the merch, 27 year-old Randleman traced her finger across each button. “This right here, the more conservative people they’ll choose the presidential seals,” she said. Then pointing at one with the president and the first family she said, “This has got him looking young...looking kind of sexy there.” It was one my favorites too. Although my top choice was the one where he’s dressed like a Jedi Warrior.

The pins are one for $5 and three for $10. Randleman says 85 percent of the proceeds go to a food pantry, and she gets the other 15 percent. Five dollars a button adds up quickly. She can end up taking home 150-200 bucks a day.

Up the street, Mikey Stuart, 17, and Thomas Watts, 16, are taking home a lot less. “We’re just trying to make enough money to eat off the dollar menu today,” they told me. The musical duo call themselves the Elaborate Door Retrievers, with Stuart on harmonica and Watts on guitar.

They were sitting against a wall with the classic starving musician’s guitar case open in front of them, and it was freckled with change and stray bills. Thus far they’d managed to pull in $6.87.

“We don’t even need to eat on the dollar menu now,” Stuart joked to Watts, “Maybe we can go somewhere fancy? Take you out somewhere nice.”

“Maybe we can afford Chick-fil-A,” exclaimed Watts.

Just when they thought it couldn’t get much better, they realized a someone famous was standing feet away at the curb. It was Jesse Jackson surrounded about throngs of reporters and conventioneers.

They picked up their equipment and set up shop just outside the huddle mass, and in a supremely awkward moment, they called out “Jesse, this song’s dedicated to you!”

While they made the most of their influential audience member, I tried to have an audience with Mr. Jackson. I wormed my way to the middle of the group and asked, “What do you think the president should do about jobs, especially for young people?“

“There will be more jobs as soon as the blockage to direct investment is opened up,” replied Jackson. He explained that bi-partisan gridlock means there’s only so much the president can do on his own, without Republican support.

“So it’s not up to him,” I pressed.

“[Job creation] can’t happen unilaterally,” Jackson said, “I wish it could, but it just can’t.”

So, if a real job is too much to ask amid political gridlock, I guess four days of odd jobs amid political theater, are better than nothing.

For more of Youth Radio's coverage of the 2012 National Conventions, check out our blog here.

Clocked In: How Teens Benefit From Retirement Tidal Wave

rjay — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 15:54:30 -0700

By: Jaylyn Burns

This story aired on Marketplace 8/30/12.

Northern California utility giant Pacific Gas & Electric could lose nearly have of their entire workforce in the next five years. They call the wave of grey haired retirees The Silver Tsunami, and since cutting the power isn't an option, PG&E is relying on a program called PowerPathway to train a new generation of utility workers.

At a pole climbing yard in Oakland, California, Ray Atkinson is pretty much training his replacement.

“Technically I could retire anytime after January first,” said Atkinson. “I’ve worked for PG&E for about 35 years, so I’ve been climbing poles since 1980.”

Atkinson has a mustache, hard hat, and deep voice. He’s your typical Bob The Builder. His student Olatungi Lawrence is a skinny teenager, inching up a utility pole for the first time. He’s just six feet off the ground and struggling to jab the steel spikes attached to his boots into the wooden pole.

Standing beneath Lawrence, Atkinson plays the role of pole climbing professor. “Right there I want you to drop straight into that pole,” commands Atkinson. “There you go, that’s what we’re looking for! Now you can lean over this side.”

Lawrence is 19 and the youngest in his class. He’s joined the PowerPathway in the hope of finding a career.

“It’s cool. They prepare you really well for it.” said Lawrence. “You’re never going up blind.” Lawrence graduated high school last year, and said most of his friends went to four year colleges, like UC Berkeley and UC Santa Barbara. Lawrence considered college, but instead, decided to focus on finding a job, because he knows people with master’s degrees who still can’t find work.

“If I can get a job now and work towards that education, that’s a great position to be in,” said Lawrence. “Instead of having to go through four years of college and owe a whole bunch of money and have no way to pay for it.”

If Lawrence finishes his nine week boot camp, he’ll become a tier one candidate for an electrical lineman position at PG&E. Jeff Wilding, Director of Electric Operations Training, said trainees like Lawrence are a lot like minor league baseball players.

“The analogy is really that if you go recruit someone out of high school or college on a baseball team,” said Wilding, “they have to go through

that whole farm system before they can get to the major leagues. Linemen in this case being the major league. Those are our pros.”

Candidates will have to complete a one year pre-apprenticeship and then a four year apprenticeship before reaching the pros. But the compensation is high. Starting salary for a pre-apprenticship position pays $47 thousand per year, and if all goes well, Lawrence could be earning $100 thousand by the time he’s 24. But he’ll have to prove he has the skills and that he can do the job safely.

“If they can’t do it safely, we really can’t afford to have them with us,” said Wilding, who calls the PowerPathway a win win. It benefits PG&E because they’re able to test out job seekers before they apply, and for job seekers, the trainings are free, fast, and come with the potential of a lucrative career.

Clocked In: Putting Young People to Work

squevedo — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 16:42:42 -0700

This story aired on Marketplace 8/24/12.

Comedian Chris Rock has this great stand up bit where he talks about working at Red Lobster as a teen, dishwashing in the back of the restaurant. His job was to basically scrape shrimp into trashcans all day. I've also worked as a dishwasher, so I know what it’s like to come home stinking of Hollandaise. Touching left-overs isn’t even the worst part. What’s worse, Rock says, is glancing up at the clock.

"When you got a career. There ain’t enough time in the day," Rock says, but "when you got a job. There’s too much time."

But these days jobs, not careers, are what a lot of us are able to get.

My friend Marlene Schoefer-Wulf used to work retail. And she’ll never forget the moment she realized it was a dead end. It happened one Friday night, after she’d already worked 9 hours, when her boss asked her to get all creative the nail gloss. "She wanted me to reorganize the nail polishes in rainbow order," said Wulf. "It was just a box with like a thousand nail polish shades in it. I actually dreamt of this for nights afterwards because it was mindless work. And I want to do something where my brain is engaged and I’m happy working, and I’m not being taken advantage of."

Every young person I know has a story like this. And the question we all ask is, “How do we go from sorting nail polish to actually earning a decent wage and maybe even liking our jobs, without being crippled by college debt?"

Stephanie Luce feels torn about reccomending young people to go to college, which is a little awkward considering she works at a University. Luce, a professor of Labor Studies at the City University of New York, says, "I believe higher education is very valuable in its own right, but I would hate to have anyone take on that kind of debt."

Here’s the problem. There are two competing realities for my generation. College is getting more

expensive and careers, they're just hard to come by. "Young people today are among the first generations in the history of the United States," says Luce, "that cannot be assured of earning average wages higher than their parents."

I don't know about you but I find that kind of depressing. I’m 19, and like a lot of people my age, I spend most of my time thinking about the future. And it’s not just me. I spoke to bunch of my peers and we’re all anxious about what’s next.

My friend Alonza Lasher is 19 years old and waiting tables at a restaurant. She chose not to go to college when she graduated high school last year, because she wasn't commited to a particular major and didn't want to shell out on tuition until she chosen a particular career path. Yet deciding on a career path is tricky says Lasher, because " Right now I don’t really feel like what I’m passionate about is something I could pursue as a career."

Champale Holmes says she dropped out of high school because she couldn't see how it connected to future. Now, at 21, she's working to get her GED so she find a good blue collar job. "Trying to get a job without a highschool diploma is hard," says Holmes, "won’t nobody hire you."

21 year-old Chris Alsobrook began going to barber college because he lost faith in finding a living wage job. Alsobrook said, "I really gave up on jobs due to the fact of how hard it is to get them. They're only paying you so little in order to take care of so much.

But there are employers, educators and organizations that are are coming up with solutions to address the skills gap and put young adults to work. Good news about the economy? That’s something everyone, especially my peers, need to hear right now.

Year Up: Answering The Skills Gap

brett — Fri, 20 Jul 2012 12:06:41 -0700

Two years ago Breyana Scales says she was stuck between a dead end job painting kids’ faces at a theme park while trying to get through college. The balancing act proved to be hard for her. "If I had to work a lot I wouldn’t be able to do homework and if I had to go to school and do homework I wouldn’t be able to afford rent," she said.

Today however, 23 year-old Scales has a job she loves at the San Francisco based video game company Zynga, the Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory of tech companies. I’m talking arcades, themed kitchens on every floor, and a giant light-up tunnel at the entrance. Her offices are enough to make me lose my composure.

Zynga’s portfolio of insanely popular games includes Words With Friends and CityVille which is the project that Scales works on, doing something called Quality Assurance, or QA. Scales says she’s like a literary editor, except instead of reading a book and looking for bad grammar; she plays Zynga’s video games and documents glitches before the games go public. She says, " I had no idea that QA even existed, but once I had the experience inside of the company, then I knew that this is something I really liked to do and this is pretty much my life right now."

So, how did she go from painting faces at a theme park to working in high tech? It was thanks to a program called Year Up which aims to help young adults learn skills in expanding sectors of the economy such as technology, high finance, and government. Even with almost 13 million Americans out of work, companies still complain that they have open positions that go unfilled because they can't find the right talent. Gerald Chertavian, the founder of Year Up, says his organization offers a solution to the skills gap by training low income 18-25 year olds in 9 cities across the U.S. to work in corporate America.

"Very sadly for many of our young adults, their potential can often be limited by their zip code, or by the bank balance of one of their parents, or indeed by the color of their skin," he told me.

Gerald Chertavian, the founder of Year Up, at the organization's headquarters in Boston. Credit: Ike Sriskandarajah/Youth Radio

The second half of the year long program is a paid internship at Fortune 1000 companies like JP Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo and Google. Chertavian says, "We’re able to speak with a senior executive at a corporation and say, “If we could show you a pipeline of pre-trained, pre-screened, cost-effective talent would you be interested?”"

But for students to even reach their internship, they first have to complete six months of rigorous classroom training. There, they learn things like IT Desktop support and bug reporting in addition to some less technical stuff like how to send professional e-mails,shake someone’s hand, or how speak up during a meeting.

In other words, Year Up Interns learn how to walk the walk… and they wear the right shoes and slacks for it too.

24 year-old Christian Ramos is a Year Up intern at LinkedIn. He’s wearing a pressed shirt, gray cardigan, and a pink tie. He sticks out among the Silicon Valley techies in their T-shirts and jeans.

Christian Ramos a Year Up intern at Linked In. Credit: Brett Myers/Youth Radio

Ramos is an in-house IT guy. His job is to help LinkedIn employees who have problems with their mobile phones. Standing at his work station, he reads through a job ticket from a worker who just lost his cell phone. "The policy is that he has to notify us right away," he says, "There’s a lot of important information there and we need to make sure that we get that cleared up before anyone gets their hands on it."

Ramos has impressed his bosses. They’ve even offered him a job once he completes his Year Up internship next month. And he’s loosening up in order to fit into the work hard, play hard culture at LinkedIn. When he transitions to full time work at LinkedIn, Ramos says he’s also aiming to lose the tie.

TV's Future Glimpsed From Inside Teen Bedroom

brett — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 10:30:39 -0800

This story originally aired on Marketplace, 1/12/12.

This week as tech geeks and gurus gather at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Marketplace asked Youth Radio's Rayana Godfrey to offer a glimpse into the future of television, from inside her bedroom. TV producers and advertisers are struggling to adapt to the changing face of television, and teens are at the leading edge of shifting viewing habits, consuming video across a range of devices and sometimes subverting the traditional advertising model to donate directly to shows through websites like Kickstarter. Listen to the full story below.

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Digg Me? Click Here

wilmer — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 11:13:24 -0700

Alec Brownstein needed to get noticed. The 29-year-old copywriter thought his advertising company wasn’t creative enough, and left. But Brownstein didn't stay stuck for long; he jumped right into a job search, with six Manhattan advertising agencies in mind.

Given the competition, Brownstein decided against the old-fashioned application process – just sending in a resume. He took a more direct approach.

Brownstein: I was doing a bit of research on Google about the agency I wanted to work for ...and about the creative directors who I wanted to work for. And so as I was Googling them and I was looking through their results I noticed that there were no ads at the top of the page or even on the side of the page...So as someone who Googles myself somewhat frequently, I realized that if there was an ad above my results, I would notice it when I Googled myself.

So that’s just what Brownstein did for the executives he hoped to work for. When they Googled themselves, they would see Brownstein’s ads asking for a job, and directing them to his website. Total cost of placing the ads? Six dollars. He bid on the ad words, and waited.

On the other side of the country, two 20-somethings used social media…to reach out to the social news site Digg.com.

Digg Publisher and Chief Revenue officer Chas Edwards says the company receives hundreds of resumes each month from hopeful employees. But instead of the typical route, these two applicants took out Facebook ads about themselves – targeting people who work at Digg.

Edwards: So when I logged in to Facebook I saw an ad that was directed at me, basically…me and other people at Digg. Someone said I would like to work at Digg, click here to find out my credentials. Both young men got interviews…

And Edwards hired one of them. He says just posting your resume and waiting for callback is like a shot in the dark. But new media strategies establish a direct relationship with the possible hiring manager. And they show you’re an innovator in a field packed with web-savvy creative types.

Edwards: I get a clear sense that these two young men really want to work at Digg. They’re not just looking for any old job, they've gone through the effort to reach out to Digg. And I think the same thing if people are following me in Twitter, and replying to me in Twitter, and we get to build a relationship I'm much more inclined to invite them in for an interview then somebody who comes in by way of Craigslist.

Alec Brownstein’s Google ad strategy didn’t get an immediate reaction, but eventually the emails started trickling in.

Brownstein: And they all said the same thing, which was somebody else was Googling me and they told me about this. But we thought it was really cool and we like your portfolio of work, would you like to come in for an interview?

Not only did Brownstein get one of the advertising jobs he interviewed for, he won some industry awards for the creativity of his job search.

Financial Aid Black Hole

nfarghalli — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 09:31:43 -0700

You can also hear Amanda's commentary online at American Public Media's Marketplace Money.

By Amanda Ly

(download mp3)

I worked hard all through high school here in Los Angeles. And I dreamed about going to a private college far from home. I imagined myself at a small liberal arts school on the east coast with leaves that changed in the fall and snow that covered the campus in the winter. But, I knew that my parents couldn't afford to pay for a private school. I figured I'd get scholarships, grants, and loans.

Now, I realize I was too optimistic. I didn't understand the economy and how hard it would be to borrow money for school. I also didn't ask financial questions of my guidance counselor, my parents or even the colleges I selected.

My guidance counselor just told me to apply and then see what happened. I applied to six schools. I didn't know much about financial aid. When I filled out the FAFSA form, the Free Application for Federal Student Aid I noticed my parent's income looked small. But the counselors always assured me that some of us would get grants or loans or scholarships. I just assumed they were talking about me.

I spent hours writing and revising college essays. I sought out recommendations. I did everything I could to show that I could be a good student. I got into my first choice-a small East Coast School. At first I was in shock. And then I felt really excited. I began planning that cross country move and a shopping spree to outfit myself with rain boots and a warmer jacket.

Then the financial award letter came. There was some money in grants and loans, but my parents still needed to pay $12,000 a year. I didn't understand what some terms meant like "subsidized" and "unsubsidized." In high school we learned what subsidies had to do with farmers and agriculture, not education. Even with the loans, we had to come up with thousands of dollars on our own. My dad and I went to the bank to apply for a private loan. We were denied because of our low household income. And I missed the deadline for many scholarships from foundations and non profit groups.

After all of that, I couldn't make the money work. I declined the admission. I'm now at a community college finishing my last semester this spring. I live at home. I'm hoping to transfer to a four- year college. I'm looking at public schools closer to home and I'm looking at outside scholarships. And this time, I hope that the grants and government loans will help me cover the costs.

Youth Radio produced Amanda's commentary which appeared originally in L.A. Youth, a newspaper written by teens in Los Angeles.