Let's send Youssef Amin to NYU

First-generation Egyptian-American Youssef Amin was 19 when he admitted to his parents that he was gay. They immediately threw him out of their nice Long Island house without a dime. Homeless, anxious, and broke, he did something truly remarkable: he taught himself to be a classical pianist.  A good one. He was admitted to Ithaca College's music program on the basis of his piano audition. He studied music and psychology, writing an Honor's Thesis on Music Cognition. He graduated summa cum laude with honors,  performed Schoenberg at a Second Viennese Music Festival, presented research at the Eastern Colleges Science Conference, and won the award for Outstanding Presentation in Psychology. 

Youssef has been accepted into a graduate program at NYU to study cognitive psychology of music. In a recent letter he wrote, "studying cognitive psychology will allow me to reflect on and illuminate the power of music. During troubled times, music brings me to broader mental states and out of worldly dilemmas. It has often brought me overwhelming joy when all my circumstances suggested I should be profoundly sad. There are professors and labs at NYU that would perfectly facilitate what I am looking to study. I want to study the neuropsychological interactions between language and music and whether the study of them can help elucidate why uplifting musical experiences are what they are to us. Developing the concrete language for music through this neurolinguistic lens is my next intellectual endeavour. The study of psychology in general at the graduate level are means to this end of translating and understanding something beautiful that has been the cornerstone of my survival."

In the same letter, Youssef described an experience while he was homeless and sleeping in shelters. "I remember walking from Nassau to Long Island’s Pride for Youth Center one night looking up and listening to Beethoven’s 9th. I am lucky compared to my peers, because nothing about the 9th felt remotely over the top to me that night. My hunger, unkemptness, and resilience were commensurate with the grandeur, and I heard that piece authentically without having to inflate my frame of mind. I cried and looked up at the stars, I was so lucky."

NYU's psychology program offers no tuition assistance and costs $68,000.  Living in NYC costs about $2,000 per month (minimum, obviously), and Youssef is already $30,000 in debt from student loans. Without some help, he won't be able to go to NYU.  I hope we can come together and make this happen. Thank you for reading this. Pitch in if you can, share this, and wish Youssef a happy couple of years as a graduate student pursuing his life's work.