The Emotional Price of Being Poor *updated
** Update by request following main article body**
I had a job interview yesterday. The first since my husband’s arrest in January for aggravated domestic assault. I have found it is difficult to make it to the in-person interview stage, especially now that almost all applications and resumes and job listings are exclusively online. Not only because I live 15 miles from any town in all 4 directions so public Wi-Fi spaces are not an option- although that doesn’t make it any easier, for sure. Or because even the jobs that don’t necessarily need skills learned exclusively during higher education now often require that you have a college degree- regardless if that degree is related to the work listed in that position or not. That doesn’t make it easier though, either.
You see, I am a 37 year old high school dropout with no college degree, very little prior job experience, and no support system. I live in the poorest of all the United States- Mississippi. And while we may be poor in monetary terms, we are rich in religious doctrine. So, when my high school sweetheart begged me not to go off to college with the scholarships my ACT scores had earned me, and waxed long and often about…
