school field trip, punishment, and figuring out post-high school plans | 4/12/2025

life update !

part 1. san diego trip

sixteen students from my school's contemporary/rock music program toured through san diego this week. we left monday morning and returned friday evening.

in summary, each day was roughly 12 hours of performing and exploring san diego and 12 hours hanging out in the hotel. 

we went everywhere as a group but the hotel rooms were divided up: 2 rooms for guys and 2 rooms for girls. i roomed with four of my best friends, who are also the musicians in our genre-transcending-metal band.

the former 12 hours consisted of setting up, performing, tearing down, getting food, visiting a museum or amusement park, getting food, and then going back to the hotel, all in a day's work. 

since the trip was 5 days and we did a lot of driving, each of my friends and i got one day on aux because we all rode in the same van. i swear this van has never heard better music. so much metal. so much prog. so much funk. so much good shit. (except when i got aux and played noise, vocaloid, and avante-garde jazz for an hour straight, that really pained everyone in the best way).

i also loved eating out with my friends. i like the way these people operate.

the latter 12 hours was a lot more interesting.

we set up an entire jam studio in our hotel living room (basically using a bunch of headphone splitters, a mixer, and a mac). the entire setup was silent so unless you had headphones plugged in you couldn't hear what we were playing. me and one of my besties recorded a song during the first night.

almost every day me and two of my friends got up at 7 to go to the pool. most of us slept no earlier than 1 each night, especially me. i stayed up producing music with them or independently, or just talking to people. the other students had like mini-parties and game nights and such but i usually just stayed in the room.

one night i decided to participate in black-jack and it was really nice because the dealer (one of my friends) enjoyed teaching me.

there was a slide-show night and it was really funny but my slideshow ended up being an hour long discussion about my life. i think it really bummed the mood out but it was worth it because i opened up about so much stuff.

the most valuable part of this trip for me was developing a new family. we ran into all the usual conflicts and issues that a family runs into. it was hard but we made mistakes and had to admit them to each other and get through, all while 3/5 of the band is sleep deprived and fed up with bullshit.

good time.

except wednesday, when my dad is sent some pictures from the performances and i am wearing a dress in almost all of them. let's just say he couldn't handle the swag. my sister texts me saying he's livid and it stays that way until friday evening. 

by friday night i'm deathly scared. this fear wasn't fully reasonable but it was also a trauma response. so i stay the night at one of my friends (who i got really close to during the trip when we talked about dad trauma to each other). i wake up the next morning and i know i'm in DEEP shit.

part 2. getting cooked

needless to say i was grilled. but not really about wearing the dresses. my dad basically told me to grow up. he said all of my problems were just the results of making mistakes and being too immature to learn from them. he said that adults don't run away like i do. and he said i was hurting him by staying out and being disobedient and avoidant. he feels like i don't care about the family at all.

BITCH I AM SCARED. i am fucking scared of you. you have fucking hurt me. you still actively hurt me without trying. every day you make me feel like a failure. it can't be helped. this is how things are. i am not as childish as you think, i'm just really fucking scared all of the time.

i try to communicate this but it was really no use and i was also basically crying the whole time.

i get one week to be independent from my family and for once i feel as though i am free. and then i actually stay out against their will for one night and i get fucked so hard for it.

i can't explain how incompetent and guilty i am made to feel by my parents. i really want to cut them out but the more i try the worse they make me feel.

words are failing me with this section so i'm gonna move on to the next thing.

part 3. getting through the rest of the day

obviously after that trip i'm more behind than ever.

after getting cooked to a crip, today i:

• made a to-do list for everything i need to do from each of my classes because i really need to pass every class this semester
• decided to uninstall discord in order to avoid random conversation and also gaming.
• got through a lot of the lecture readings for my psychology of oppression class
• took a nap
• tried to email UCB about my upcoming financial situation since i plan on running from home after i graduate high school. ran into a bunch of built-in walls (like the fact that i have to submit my intent to register BEFORE i can schedule appointments or ask questions about financial aid) and also remembered how little i know about where i'm going and what i'm doing. more on this later.
• "purist bedrotting," which is what the people of my journalism class call laying in bed and staring into nothingness while the mind runs rampant.
• desperate piano improvisation time.
• writing this blog and listening to hitsaku hiyajo's album sasayakareta yume no hanashi.

part 4. mind is starting to doubt plans for the future (and rightfully so!)

firstly, what will happen in the next two months if i submit my intent register at UCB? my parents will not only kill me for being disobedient, but for being extremely stupid. it's so much more expensive to go to that school than to go to UCI, at least on paper, since i'll be in the bay area and i'd have to pay for housing.

but i want to get away from orange county and from my family, and that's also kind of a dream school for me. i want to go far in life and that school is a part of that process.

but also, i stayed out against their will for only ONE night and i feel so terrible. i made my mom cry and my dad barked at me like a fucking dog. my sister took some of the brunt too even though she wasn't involved at all. imagine if i ran away from home for several months... that would take some hard for both me and my family members.

secondly, what am i gonna do financially? i'd have to become fully independent (living in shelters and working) and also have proof that i'm not just doing this because my parents refuse to support me. i'm doing this because i need to be fully detached from these fuckers. does someone like that get financial aid? seemingly not... i'd have to make it look like a special circumstance in which i suddenly had to escape an abusive situation and can no longer get support from my parents. but even then, that's technically just a variant of "parents refuse to support the student."

if i don't get aid there's no way i'm paying the full tuition ($18k + other bullshit) by the deadline. i don't know if i can even loan that much money. FAFSA is giving me 5k and i could probably make like 4k this summer at best, leaving me with 9k to get through private loans. i don't fucking know how to get private loans. i don't even know if i can open a bank account independently.

so if i want to go to UCB, i have to figure out the following things with enough certainty to commit by may 1:

• consult various counselors about whether or not my plan will work. i don't think this plan is written anywhere on spacehey but i'm not gonna bother now.
• this will involve so much finagling around mandated reporting that i will have to do this in person, which is scary but something i have to work through.
• list of possible places for me to live without my parents finding me
• list of possible places for me to work without my parents finding me
• how to get loans going (dependency override)
• will i get grants?

i also have to be able to deal with some other cons:

• parents freak the fuck out when they eventually figure out i submitted my intent to register for berkeley instead of irvine (which would be pretty quick).
  
• i'd probably then have to explain to them that i want to run away and be independent from them, which would ruin the plan entirely. from their perspective this would actually seem like a totally stupid and childish choice too. so, yeah.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

so i did a ton of reading. it's like brainrot but with financial aid and university websites.

part 5. info and plans for me (not for you but idc if you read)

what i already know

• UCI is giving me 19k raw tuition
• UCB is giving me 17k raw tuition
  
  
• both offered 5.5k federal direct loans. i don't have to start repaying these until 6 months after i graduate university, which is pretty nice. these are the only loans i can seemingly take as an independent student.
  
  
• UCI is projecting that i can get the rest of my tuition paid using federal PLUS loans. however, PLUS loans are exclusively for parents, so i wouldn't be going down the run-away-and-become-an-independent-student route for that. it's an option for sure though and i'd have to stick with shitty family life, which i don't know if i can actually handle because i'd imagine it only gets worse once loans are involved. also the repayment for these starts like 60 days into the semester.. so basically my parents would just be straight up paying for my college for me. not what i'm tryna have happen.
  
  
• both UCI and UCB have dependency override option and it's kind of identical for both. i'd have to redo my fafsa, explain my abusive home environment, provide documentation of my homelessness, etc. i'd file a change of circumstance.
• i need the dependency override to make use of any of my loans without my parents.
  
  legitimate tuition plan for UCI

• from UCI, the most i can get from federal direct loans is 9.5k assuming i got the dependency override to work.
  - the other 10k has to come from somewhere.
  - i can probably work for 6k this summer if i really try. but that leaves 4k.
  - this is where it gets risky. at this point i would be depending on grants to be given to me from the school.
• from UCB, i don't even fucking know. it seems like it'd be way harder to try to go there because they don't have any information about loans.

goals for next week's me bc most of this shit only works on weekdays

• get a call or email going with UCB in any way possible.
• get a call or email going with UCI financial aid guidance peeps.
• schedule a meeting with a GWC counselor.
• send an email to my high school guidance counselor and probably schedule a meeting for that too. i have to careful with this one because she's a mandated reporter.
• also do my entire schoolwork to-do list

questions that i need answered / things to remember

• my preferred school is UCB for xyz reasons. however, my situation is xyz so i am financially limited. do i stand a chance at attending UCB in terms of tuition and fees? while at UCI i would have housing, at UCB i might be completely unsupported.
• how likely is it that i will get my dependency override approved from UCI or UCB, respectively? what documentation do i need?

• how can i receive loans independently? what's the process for that in terms of filling out an MSP or even having a bank account to receive the loan?
  
• do i get 3rd year direct loans or 1st year level direct direct loans? how much can i expect to recieve?

• how likely is it that i will receive grants from UCI or UCB, respectively? for how much?
• i want to start working ASAP. how can i receive paychecks as a homeless minor?
  

okay so it's been like 1.5 hours since i started writing this thing and i've been doing more research while writing it.

my brain is done now. i'm still dissatisfied because i'm still so uncertain about the future. 

i'd like to think that in the past few hours i've become slightly less uncertain but honestly i just keep learning of more and more things i don't know.

welp.

goodnight spacehey.

- francis t.