#7: A small, personal ask
First and last time I will be doing this on here.
Friends — I apologize in advance, but can I have your attention for a brief moment? Please feel free to share this with others as well.
As some of you may already know, I will be going to grad school this coming fall. Since my volunteer mission came to an end in June, I have been working and studying full-time throughout the summer, in preparation for my year-long M.S in Management of Information Systems and Digital Innovation (MISDI) at the London School of Economics (LSE)—likely the world's best institution for my purposes. I’m excited about every aspect of this opportunity... well, except the cost. With the pandemic rendering most domestic and international scholarship opportunities unattainable, my approximated cost of attendance will be $75,000 for the year—almost as much as my entire four-year stay at CSB/SJU.
Being less than two months out has led me to the conclusion that I may need some financial assistance in seeing this through sustainably, and since the moment I got admitted to LSE, friends and family have made it clear that they want to help me out. After a lot of stubbornness on my part, my closest convinced me to create a personal fundraiser (which you can find here) for everyone who wants to do me the favor of making life easier for the coming year.
Let me be painfully honest with you: I hate doing this. There is not a fiber in my body that likes requesting money to entertain my privileges, when I know that the needs of so many individuals across the globe are far from covered. I hope to give back in ways that benefit my surroundings, mainly by encouraging ethical and thoughtful entrepreneurship in the digital space—a domain that affects essentially everyone. Beyond assuring you that I will use my education to give back what I have taken, I want to offer alternatives that might give you more value (I will add to this list as I come up with ideas):
- Subscribe (paid or unpaid) to this blog. I expect to be significantly more consistent with posts in the weeks and months ahead.
- Donate to my friend Steffi's grad school fund. She likely needs it more than I do.
With all of this said, every SEK ($1 ≈ 8.6 SEK) counts, and I am grateful for every person who even bothered visiting the GoFundMe page. I would also ask that if you’re comfortable with it, to not make your donations anonymous—I want to know who’s helping me out. I hope I can repay even a fraction of the kindness that I have been shown over the past few years of struggle, and getting my M.S will put me in a position to do just that.
Since graduating from high school, I have taken decisions that inevitably implied financial burden as a trade-off for personal growth. I went to college in the United States, even though Swedish higher education is free. Then, I chose to volunteer full-time during a pandemic, knowing that I already owed more than $85,000 in student loans. Throughout this time, I have also insisted on not receiving assistance from my mother—the only other member of my immediate family—as I believe she has already sacrificed everything to get me this far (although now I may be forced to). Therefore, I opted for a gap year before starting college, to ensure I could cover the costs independently. I am doing something similar this summer, studying and working full-time to be better prepared, both financially and academically, for my upcoming journey.
Now, some will consider these costly endeavors mindless for someone who comes from a background of relatively limited means. However, if every individual were to set their ambitions based on the hand they were dealt, then people like myself would never even think to attend a program at the London School of Economics. I hope to avoid the potential heartbreak of turning down the graduate program of my dreams, only for having taken on experiences that I believe have qualified me for it. I sincerely thank you for making it to the bottom of this page, and promise you that I will not be bothering you with similar asks in the future.
Love and appreciation,
Bardi