Hi everyone. I am facing a dilemma currently. Can I get anyone advice on my situation. I feel like my future looks bleak at 23 now . I am currently in my final semester of CS degree. My internship start this month and graduation in August.
I have to make a decision whether to delay my internship or drop out to get a full time job to pay for some of the living expenses as my dad didn't provides for the family anymore and cut off communication leaving me and my mom manage the living expenses ourselves.
The issue is that I have to repay the loan if I delay my internship more than 1 semester or I decide to dropout. Both options will lead me owed a debt. I am not sure what should I do right now or which way is the best?.
I won't need to paid back the loan if I completed my degree with first class honors on time.
I have been trying to look for financial aid I can apply and support/help from people online by sharing details of my situation with proof (my offer letter, scholarship, loan and waiver conditions) in a campaign page (https://whydonate.com/fundraising/fund-raising-for-my-family-) since last month but still no progress so far as of today. Should I give up my degree at this point with one semester left before graduation?.
The only thing I would suggest is to broaden your horizons a bit. If you don't have a meal plan at the school, you need to be looking for food assistance programs, soup kitchens, church breakfasts/dinners, etc to reduce your cost of food. In terms of income, I'd consider whether it is true that you truly need a full time job or if a part time position (ideally working from home) would fill enough of the gap.
Given that you're in CS, you could look at bounty programs, book keeping (I'm sure you can figure out quicken or excel or vibecode something to automate a majority of the workload).
There are companies that pay people to train their AI models via chatting and providing feedback.
You could work remote tech support.
You could set up a side hustle providing tech support for students, start a faceless youtube channel, start a real youtube channel, etc.
If your dad is no longer contributing due to some medical or accident situation, there are sometimes hardship grants and loans for students.
In any case, if the worst case is that you end up having to take an interest bearing loan for a single semester, that's not the end of the world. If you're agressive with paying it down via being agressive with your personal revenue, you could be done paying it off in as little as a few years.