I’m pretty sure I read John Scalzi’s terrific essay Being Poor when he first wrote it, back in the days after Katrina, but I don’t think I ever made it all the way through the comments. I’m about halfway through right now, and I wanted to share this one:

Being poor is turning down a college scholarship because the college wanted the parents to contribute $800 for the year (!) and it might as well have been $80,000. (Later I found out that if we had just called the school and explained, they would have found a way for me to attend. But how were we to know? I was the first person in my family to attend college.)