To the Editor:

Re: “Yale can’t afford to follow pack on aid reform,” 11/12: Wake up, brush your teeth, run to class, and another one, and another one. Grab a quick lunch, and go to work. Go to the gym, go to dinner, do your work and go to bed. Dream about being able to pay for your college education. Dream about not feeling that you have to be an Econ major to survive through life. Dream that you could have the college experience that your friends are having. Dream that all this effort will really be worth it in the end.

Some things in life are priceless. A great education, being surrounded by interesting people and an opportunity of a lifetime are apparently not. As I go through the motions of my everyday college life I realize the price I am paying for these things may be too high. After having received generous financial aid from Yale College, my family still struggles to find funds to keep me here. And I still struggle to justify the motions. I worry that I will go through four years of college and will not have time to do anything other than schoolwork and work for money. I worry that I will go through four years of boring classes that are required for this alleged “money-making” major or the other. I worry that Yale College does not really allow international students on financial aid to survive here, or more importantly survive here happily. Yale College invests in many noble and important causes domestically and internationally. Are students enough of a noble cause to invest in? I do not know the answer to that.

Having only been here for three months, the word “transfer” comes to mind perhaps much more often than it should. Maybe some other school’s money can buy the happiness of those who are struggling here.

Hilla Meller ’08

Nov. 13, 2004