Tell a story about being poor in college

I made $450/month working at the campus radio station. That didn't last long when rent was $275. I lived in a desert climate so I lived without heat. No natural gas also meant no hot water. Showers sucked.

 

Not exactly poor:
My roomie and I had a female friend who worked the checkout at Krogers. She had a crush on my roomie.
Anyway, she told us to come by the store one day when she was working the checkout and she would hook us up.
We took advantage ... bought some pork loin, and a few cases of imported beer and some other shit walked out of the store with about at least $50 worth of groceries that we paid $10 for.
When she was ringing up she was nervous, worried about all the shit we had loaded up with.
We got back to campus, and broke out the Dick Butkus Quick Cook Grill and did the loin and drank beer.
Looking back it was really stupid, prolly woulda went to jail if we got caught. Her too. Luckily, nobody got caught.

 

One more:
We had two pledges who smoked up their scholarship money. One guy, Dan, was an international student from Thailand, whose parents has some money.
His roommate, Joe, was a football player from Jersey who got a scholarship to school, but never played a down.
Second semester, after football season and Christmas break, these two guys go to class, come back to the dorms and fire up.
After about a week, they stop going to class altogether. Just stay in the dorm all day, smoking weed.
Joe told us he spent second semester scholarship money (about $2K) on weed.
These guys smoked at least $4K in weed in a semester. That was all the did.
Both left and never came back.
I found Joe on FB a few months back ... he's divorced with a kid, working a 40-hour-a-week job trying to keep his ex-wife off his back and hang onto his kid.

 

One semester my living arrangements were five girls in a two-bedroom apartment with 1.5 bathrooms. Five girls sharing one shower meant there were many, many fights.

 

If you wanted to make extra money you should have sold tickets.

 

I know a bunch of psychiatrists at your alma mater. Now I know that you're the hot dog guy they always talk about.

 

My friends and I lived down the street from Allen Fieldhouse in college and we had our beer/grocery money for each month taken care of from November to February by selling parking spaces in the yard. We could (illegially) park up to 15 cars in the driveway and behind the house where they weren't visible to passing cops. Charged $10-$30 a pop depending on how big a game it was. For 7 p.m. starts we'd fire up the grill and sell hot dogs for $2 to people that didn't have time to get dinner after work.

 

I lived at home with my mom and worked pretty much full-time while I was in college, so I wasn't poor. I had to wait until I left school, got a full-time job and moved out to be poor. But I don't have any cool stories about being poor.

 

I was in a similar situation. Had a full-tuition scholarship, plus most semesters I had another scholarship or two, so when I picked up my schedule (back then it was all on paper, not online) I got my schedule and a check. Mom and Dad were paying for housing, and I was working a ton at the campus paper. Not a bad gig.

 

I also had a couple of sweet easy paying gigs. I'd work as a nightclerk in my dorm one night a week. $4.50 an hour (which was minimum wage then) for 3 hours a week during the week, 4 on weekends.

I'd sit at the front door with a sign-in sheet. Every student that came in after 11 would have to show me their ID. After they did, I'd let them through, and if they had any friends with them, I'd sign them in. That was it. I'd do it until 2 a.m., or 3 on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, where I had another person to help me.

It was cool because when it got quiet, I could just study, or chat with my co-worker. The TV would be available around 1:30, so I'd watch some TV from my spot, or go shoot some pool, which was also right near the door.

My other cool gig was in my senior year, my girlfriend (Future wife) was part of an Equal Opportunity program for poor students. I qualified to be a tutor for a few classes, so I'd tutor my girlfriend (this was legit). Good way to make a few extra bucks.

 

There was a Burger King located just off campus near the projects that went on like a two-year kick of selling Whoppers for 99 cents. Even after adding cheese and sales tax, it came to $1.50. I ate so many of those that I could tell when they messed up my order just by the weight of the burger.

 

I won't get too graphic but my best "too poor" story from college involved my first hook-up.

Suffice to say, we were messing around and she suggested getting a motel room which, looking back on it, would have cost me about a six-minute drive and maybe $30.

To lose my V-Card.

I was too cheap, we did it in the campus parking lot, her mother caught us and I missed out on at least a couple months worth of fun because I wouldn't even consider spending $30 for some privacy.