College Tuition

Hello, my name is Rose Anguiano and I'm 26 years old. I come from a middle class family who lives in the west side of San Antonio. My parents were both born in Mexico and they've been living here in San Antonio for 30+ years. I'm the youngest of 5 and the first to attend college. I graduated from Memorial High School back in 2009. It's been tough trying to better my life with always having  people sterotyping me becasue of the high school I graduated from and the neighborhood I live in. Therefore, I want to be able to prove to all these people that I can accomplish my goals that I have set for myself no matter if I live in a bad neighborhood or if I graduated from a low rating high school. However, it's been tough to be able to accomplish my goals which is to graduate from Texas A&M Univeristy-San Antonio with my bachelors in Criminology because of my financial issues. In my household its just me and my parents. They are older people and are currently disabled. The checks they recieve every month from the government is not enough to pay for bills or to even get groceries. I am currently a full time student at Texas A&M University-San Antonio and I work part time on campus and the checks I recieve are not enough either to help my parents with bills or get groceries or even for myself because I can only work 19 hours since its a campus job for students. So it has really been tough. Financial aid can no longer help me out becasue I am close to exceeding the limit to the pell grant since I've been in school for literally 8 years now. I am so close to graduate from this university as well. I just have one semester left and the fact that I might not get help to pay for my tuition is really affecting me bad because throughtout my college years I have really learned to succeed and better myself as a student. Honestly, I struggled a lot in my classes due to personal issues which caused me to fall behind and for my GPA to drop, but since I have a goal to graduate and not only give myself a better life but also my parents, I have really worked hard to be able to succeed. I met with counselors in campus to help me deal with my personal issues, I have even met with an academic success coach to help me learn new skills to apply in my classes, and lastly, I have even started meeting with my professors one on one so that I can better understand the material that I need to learn. Therefore, with all this wonderful help that I have been seeking out and getting, my GPA has really gone up dramatically and I have been doing great in all my classes. Now, I just need 3 more classes left in order to graduate and I know I can do great to pass them, however, if I don't raise up the money I need to pay for my tuition by the end of August, then I wont be able to accomplish my goal. Whatever help I can get I will greatly appreciate it for the rest of my life because thanks to you I will be able to accomplish my goals and prove to those that didn't believe in me that I can be someone great in life. :)