W

aiting for a financial aid offer is a lot like 

waiting for a medical diagnosis. The un-

known creates a fear so piercing, so all-

consuming, that when the anticipated phone call or email 

finally comes through, holding your fate in a short string 

of sentences, your life halts for a second. And then, the 

shock: Maybe it’s a temporary loss of hearing. Maybe 

your heart begins to race so much you forget to breathe. 
Maybe you grow limp, wilting under the weight of life-

altering information. And you can’t quite decide what’s 

worse: The anticipatory dread that precedes the news or 

the physiological, traumatic reaction that the news elicits.

I’ve experienced this kind of reaction only a few times 

in my life before one night at the end of July, when a hand-

ful of large numbers on a financial aid document told me I 

might not be able to return to the University of Michigan 

in the fall. The earliest time I can remember was when I 

first got my period. I had just returned home from going 

sledding with a couple of friends, and I pulled down my 

snow pants to find my baby-blue underwear stained with 

a small streak of beet-red blood. I clumsily redressed my-

self and hysterically reported my cherry-colored discov-

ery to my mom. I remember feeling like I was speaking 

inside a fishbowl, the words muffled and distant. 

Then there was the time I came home from sixth grade 

to find my house had been robbed. Neither the driveway 

littered with my mom’s jewelry nor the front door that 

had been left swung open and battered on the perimeter 

registered in my brain as red flags. It was the gaping space 

left next to our fireplace, where a TV had been the day 

prior, that finally triggered my primal fight-or-flight re-

sponse. Panicked, I incorrectly dialed 911 a couple times 

before finally collecting myself and dialing the correct 

digits.

And then there was the night I got rejected from 

Northwestern University’s prestigious Medill School of 

Journalism. The purple text on my application portal 

seemed to distort in front of me until I finally found the 

words: “We regret to inform you ...” The place I had spent 

months researching and fantasizing about and pining for 

had closed its doors to me; I felt like I had lost a future I 

hadn’t been able to live yet. 

Shifting my sights from the fiercely capable version 

of myself I dreamed I would be at Northwestern to some 

other, unknown person that would excel at a different 

school felt impossible. This, compounded by a brutal 

flare-up of my generalized anxiety disorder, meant that I 

would need to navigate a life-changing college decision 

process inside the headspace of someone I didn’t recog-

nize. 

Like most of my peers, I was tackling countless ad-

missions essays and scholarship applications, but found 

myself trying to navigate anti-anxiety medications and 

intensive therapy, too. In a moment of panic, I told my 

mom I didn’t want to live like this anymore, constantly 

adjusting my dosages and undergoing therapy to counter-

act my worsened symptoms only to be back at the same 

place: Anxious and uncertain and unsure about where in 

the world I wanted to go to college. A couple weeks be-

fore college decisions were due, my mom sat me down on 

our brown leather couch and told me college might not be 

the right choice for me. Her eyes, big and blue and brim-

ming with tears, looked into mine with intense worry. She 

knew that the version of me sitting in front of her was not 

ready for any sort of undergraduate education come Au-

gust. 

Then I was accepted into the University of Michigan. A 

younger version of myself in a better frame of mind might 

have seen my acceptance letter that spring and cried with 

joy. She might have then seen my official financial aid of-

fer a few weeks later and be overcome with pride looking 

at the considerable amount of aid I had received in grants 

and awards. That single offer, that single document told 

me where I needed to be. But my anxiety told me other-

wise — that I was incapable, damaged, too mentally un-

stable to go to college. 

And when I was at my senior prom, dateless and se-

verely bummed out, I looked around at my classmates, all 

of whom I’d known since first grade, and knew in my gut 
that I owed it to myself to start over, outside of Indiana 

and at the University. 

So, after a few more months of therapy, leaning into 

friends and family and allowing myself to regain the kind 

of confidence I carried before my Northwestern rejec-

tion, I found myself in Ann Arbor in the fall of 2019. I was 

anxiety-free and confident in my ability to excel in my 

classes, constantly riding a high of meeting new people 

and going to new places. Even when I would experience 

a wave of anxiety, a quick trip to a buzzing and happening 

Shapiro Undergraduate Library would remind me that 

this place and all the people in it are so much bigger than 

my anxieties will ever be. 

Come Halloween, I found a group of people I loved 

to be around, I had two work-study jobs and I was writ-

ing for an online magazine. Even throughout quarantine 

and the transition to online classes, I was talking with my 

U-M friends every day, naively hopeful for a fall semester 

back in Ann Arbor, where I would be a sophomore once 

again living off of over-priced lattes and the thrill of short-

lived eye contact with a pretty stranger.

When the isolation grew to be disheartening, I would 

picture myself in the places I thought would be waiting 

for me in the fall: An East Quad Dining Hall bustling with 

professors and students speaking different languages; 

a crisp, leaf-covered lane leading me to Tappan Hall; a 

bright window seat in the Literati Coffee shop. One year 

as a Wolverine meant that I had this bountiful stash of 

memories and experiences to store away and return to, 

pockets of joy and contentment to relive when life grew 

dull.

This made it all the more devastating when my parents 

delivered the crushing diagnosis this past July, a month 

before my sophomore year was supposed to begin: You 

cannot afford the University this year. My heart sank in 

disbelief and that odd, fishbowl-type of sensation came 

over me as my parents’ voices warped into muffled noises.

After a few moments, the news found its place in the 

logical part of my brain and I started panicking. Was I 

supposed to bail on my roommate? What would happen 

to my credits? What would I tell my friends with whom I 

was supposed to live junior year? Where would I transfer? 

The morning after I received Michigan’s diagnosis, I 

sent in my transfer application to an in-state institution 

with tears streaming down my face. I was overcome with 

panic — how could one document usher so much change 

into my life? I couldn’t eat or sleep for two days. Every 

waking moment was spent attempting to grieve the loss 

of the life I created for myself at U-M, while frantically 

trying to secure admission and housing somewhere in In-

diana.

My family and I called the financial aid office to in-

quire about the reasoning behind the significant reduc-

tion in my aid package. The officers spoke of formulas 

and the FAFSA, essentially attributing the entire reduc-

tion in my aid to a shift in our household as shown on the 

FAFSA. “Michigan” or “no Michigan” was determined by 

one highly-intricate financial aid formula calculated in 

just the right way. During this award cycle, the office ex-

plained, a faulty number was plugged into my application. 

So, it seemed, the answer was “no Michigan.”

But nevertheless, I am here, writing this article as a 

U-M student, as a sophomore gearing up for the begin-

ning of a year marked by social distance guidelines and 

other COVID-19 precautions. While my original diagno-

sis seemed to be completely inalterable, extensive com-

munication with the financial aid office helped me undo 

the faulty digit that led me to the blunt, cold end of a “no 

Michigan” equation. 

And so, I along with all of my peers are met with the 

sour taste of a different diagnosis: One that marks this en-

tire academic year with “cautious optimism” toward de-

livering a “health-informed semester.” One that involves 

a Michigan Union meticulously reconfigured so students 

study from a safe social distance, dining hall lines stretch-

ing for blocks and a campus-wide animosity that allows 

us to berate freshmen for partying. And we’re paying full, 

even increased, tuition for all of this.

Campus does not look like the University I remem-

bered while straining for first-year memories during an 

isolating quarantine or sitting across from my parents, 

crying at the thought of not being able to afford returning 

this fall. We’re struggling, endlessly irritated with our ad-

ministration and with each other as we clumsily navigate 
a “culture of care.” Nevertheless, all we can do with the re-

ality of this school year is conduct ourselves in a way that 

ensures no one else has to grapple with a similar fate. The 

diagnosis is seemingly crushing, but we’ve got to make do 

with it somehow.

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
14 — Wednesday, September 2, 2020 
statement

A faulty diagnosis 
and a dream deferred

BY GRACE TUCKER, STATEMENT COLUMNIST

ILLUSTRATION BY TAYLOR SCNOTT

