“Be ready to monetize yourself, in a sense. Any opportunity you need to pounce on it.” — Interviewee 3

Hi everyone!

I’ve been sharing periodic updates on this project throughout the summer; the goal was to space them out since I’ll be continuing the work into the school year. I felt that if I were to upload everything by July 4, 2026, which is when my in-person experience ended, I'd end up with some posts that don't really cover much. With what I have to share with you all today, I was right.

Posts 3–4 will focus more closely on what I learned while actually developing the workshop.

At the beginning of the summer, I set out to create a financial aid navigation workshop for CUNY and SUNY students. What I initially imagined as a resource-development project quickly became much more research-intensive in the first few weeks. I was reviewing financial aid policies, verifying eligibility requirements across programs, comparing resources from different agencies, and even working through the legislative language behind recent changes to student aid and repayment. 

I quickly began to learn that even in a state like New York, which has invested heavily in expanding college access and affordability, access to financial aid does not necessarily mean students understand how to navigate it.

A few findings from my student interviews stood out:

• 3 out of 4 students knew where their student loans came from, but did not know who their loan servicer was or how they would navigate repayment after college.
• Every student I interviewed described navigating financial aid as entering some form of “unknown territory.”
• Students receiving the Excelsior Scholarship were not always aware that its post-graduation New York State residency requirement can affect whether the award remains a scholarship or converts into a loan.
• One student described the relationship between borrowers, loan servicers, and colleges this way: “Companies are starting to realize that they need students to understand the loans, or students won’t pay them back.”

Once again, I'm brought back to: “Be ready to monetize yourself, in a sense. Any opportunity you need to pounce on it.” — Interviewee 3

This comment stayed with me, both on and off the screen. Something I had half-hazardously jotted down while scrambling to keep up with my interviewee became one of the most grounding parts of this project, pulling me back to the reason I do this work in the first place: those words were once mine.

It’s a sobering experience to hear your own frustrations reflected to you by the people you interview, but there’s also something so rewarding about realizing that I’m now in a position to mobilize that collective frustration and turn our experiences into research, resources, and advocacy that can actually push for change.