One thing I love at Wellesley is that they’re pretty great at making sure you can follow your own projects without worrying too much about the cost. I wanted to write about this because last weekend I got to attend a writing conference, I enjoyed the heck out it, and I definitely wouldn’t have been able to do it without that sweet, sweet Wellesley money.
Back at the beginning of the year, I applied for a Wellesley grant to fund my creative writing thesis, made it to the interview stage, and … didn’t get it. But then I applied to a second Wellesley grant, because they’re good about offering students lots of options, and that one came through. My thesis advisor told me there were all sorts of things I could do with the money–buy collections of short stories, pay literary magazine submission fees, subscribe to Poets and Writers, go on a writing retreat, go to a conference, or some combination of these. I went with buying short story collections and going to this conference. There’s no way I could have afforded the registration fees without the funding.
I had an amazing time. I went to panels on everything from organizing short story collections to writing op-eds to creating “unlikeable” female characters. My favorite part was the session where people could go up and pitch their half-finished story to a panel of published authors and get suggestions for how to end it. I went from being completely stuck on the last story in my collection to having so many ideas I didn’t know which one to pick.
Last summer, I lived off another Wellesley grant. Career Education is pretty generous about handing out grants to cover unpaid summer internships in general. Typically, students get $3,000-$4,000 to cover summer expenses and more if the internship is abroad. Since DC is such an expensive place to live and there are a lot of fields where most of the good internships are located there, the Wellesley in Washington program specifically offers housing and a stipend to students who want to do unpaid internships in the area. I applied and got in during fall semester. They gave us a $3,000 stipend for the summer and put us up in George Washington dorms (which definitely cost more than $3,000!). The picture up top was taken from the free base ball game we attended right before the Fourth of July. There’s no way I could have afforded an unpaid internship in DC if I hadn’t gotten this opportunity.
There are a lot of other, small ways that Wellesley makes sure that most students can afford their needs. There’s a collection of suits that anyone can borrow for a job interview, free bus rides into Boston during the week so anyone can afford MIT classes, free counseling through the Stone Center, smaller stipends for part time unpaid internships, unlimited dining hall access, annual $100 Amazon gift cards for textbooks for students on financial aid, and of course, generous financial aid.
All this doesn’t mean that money doesn’t affect Wellesley students’ experiences. It’s always going to be easier navigating college if you can call your parents to pay for textbooks or take care of the expensive NYC summer rental that $4,000 doesn’t quite cover, and not everyone who applies is going to get the grants available. But that’s true pretty much everywhere, and from what I’ve heard from friends, Wellesley offers more resources than most places. I know I’m always going to be grateful for all the opportunities that Wellesley has given me!