Does any arts grad program support students who don't have the bank of mom and dad?
This is mostly just a rant, but I'm getting increasingly burnt out and frustrated being the only grad student in my program who is required to work for a living in addition to doing a full-time grad program.
I spent five years out of school working in various industries and unfortunately the last one I worked in just had all of its funding cut so I ended up going to grad school to mostly just get health insurance.
I have a full tuition scholarship and a very, very small stipend and health insurance. But unfortunately, I still have to pay rent and groceries and all of the other living expenses.
As a music student, I'm expected, in order to keep my scholarship, to play alternating cycles of 12 hours a week of rehearsal for our orchestra. Unfortunately, this coincides with the hours that I work at my job doing instrument repair. So, whenever we have orchestra concerts, my hours get cut by about 50% for two weeks.
I'm kind of at the end of my rope because even though we are out of orchestra cycle right now, one of our required auditions just got rescheduled to the middle of my work day. And we had two weeks of orchestra last month, so I'm already very low on cash.
On top of this, the syllabus for my instrument requires three to five hours of individual practice on solo repertoire every day. And I'm also a member of three other ensembles, which require their own preparation and practice.
A few of my colleagues do have student jobs at the university. However, the student work only pays $10 an hour and has a maximum of 10 hours a week so that it's not viable for people who are supporting themselves.
Is anyone here a music student who had to work through graduate school and if so how did you manage to keep up with all of your classmates who have many free hours in the day to practice and parental support for buying instruments and strings and repairs etc?
Do you know of any funding resources that I might be able to apply for to help cover living expenses?
