College try.(Lowest Ebb)(financially low times)

Publication: The New Yorker

Publication Date: 22-APR-02

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COPYRIGHT 2002 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.

The rough patch I skidded into when my son was in first grade and I embarked on single-momhood would not earn me a slot on the poverty tables, yet at no other time in my life have financial anxieties transformed my head into such an anthill of fret.

By every yardstick, I was O.K. My career as a poet -- if such a thing can be said to exist -- had won me a few prizes and thus the relatively illustrious post of assistant professor at Syracuse University. I owned a modest home, had health insurance, an agreeable divorce. But every month, after I wrote checks for the mortgage, utilities, and my portion of child-care costs, only a few hundred dollars...

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