Taxes, money or the lack thereof, and other horrors

Just calculated my taxes. As a result of my fellowship, I owe close to $1500. Don't they get it? Even with fellowships, students are poor. That kind of $$ is over a month's worth of fieldwork -- money I already don't have -- and invaluable in terms of peace of mind, something else I already don't have. Mine, of course, is the thoroughly taxable sort of fellowship, no exemptions for me. I'm sick to my stomach, literally.

Sure I wouldn't be able to do fieldwork but for, but somehow it still doesn't seem right. Everywhere I turn people are just out to make a buck. Gotta use US carriers, gotta get 'official' translations of the birth certificate ($5 a pop), gotta get a 'recently issued' birth certificate (for $22), gotta pay $300 in visa 'processing' fees, gotta have transcripts ($10), gotta have international and national insurance (at a cost of about, wow, $1000, imagine that). I really, really shouldn't have come home. The airfare alone would have given me a cushion that is now completely and totally gone. I should've expected this, but I didn't.

Every grad student I've known has had to worry in very unhealthy, miserable ways about money and it's so incredibly demoralizing, it's amazing more of us don't give it up. So, let me embrace the old cliche: If only I knew then, what I know now.

Add to that the unfortunate reality that our president is overwhelmingly stupide, and I've had a lovely day.

B.