Every so often this Blog will take a moment to revel in the delight that comes from being a perpetually broke college student. The sacrifices, the savings, the steals, all will be accounted for in this post, and those to inevitably follow.
I report to you, now, from inside a very ordinary dorm room, at a very ordinary desk, where, upon the third rung of a built in shelf sits a ceramic plate in the shape of a leaf. There, nestled in the midst of its retoussé, burnt orange edges are a handful of coins, which have come to be called, the Emergency MetroCard Fund (no, not EMF, it is far more fun to say the phrase in its anti-abbreviated entirety). To be honest, the collection of coins was, at first, simply that, an ever-growing mound of loose change, pried from the zip pocket of a dangerously bulging wallet. The change was removed, placed in the plate, and the wallet was thin once more. The plate’s transition from dual functioning paper weight/ change purse… change leaf… whatever, made the transition to the Emergecy MetroCard Fund in the Summer of 2010, when, low on funds, I borrowed from it several quarters and bought myself four rides on my “insufficient fare” MetroCard- two to work and two from work. Now, when I say “work” I mean internship and when I say “internship” I mean unpaid. The little MTA charges on my bank statement, highlighted in ice blue, were slowly beginning to add up during those summer months, and so, I rode the rails with a new sense of freedom that morning and the morning after, delighted to avoid another transportation induced charge on my credit card. To me, loose change wasn’t real money, and when I collected, saved and spent the coins on MetroCards it began to feel as if I never paid to take the subway.
“Wouldn’t it be nice,” I thought, “to never have to pay for my MetroCard with my own money ever again?”
Then, I discovered Mechanical Turk, a website run by Amazon, which allows anyone to log on with their Amazon username and password, perform various online tasks (i.e. surveys) and get paid for it. The reward for completing said tasks can range in value anywhere from a penny to even as high as twenty dollars. When completed tasks are approved the money is put into the user’s Amazon account, and from there the user can either spend the money on Amazon products or transfer it to an outside account after reaching a minimum of ten earned dollars.
While, as an MTurk worker I knew the program would never bring me copious amounts of cash, the sums were large enough to continue to front my transportation needs and then some. When I found myself with time to spare and an Internet full of pointless distraction at my finger tips, I turned to MTurk and got paid for my procrastination and general boredom with the day. Instead of youtube videos I took surveys and instead of facebooking I answered questions about consumer products, all the while, not only earning money, but saving money. I bought an inexpensive dress at forever twenty-one and having just transferred some MTurk rewards into my bank account it felt like I bought the dress at a fifty percent off discount.
Even if you don’t really need to scrounge for nickels and dimes, who among us doesn’t love to get an extra ten dollars every now and then? Who doesn’t rejoice when a forgotten few bucks are found in the pockets of a coat worn last season? Or when a one-dollar bill just happens to blow across our path while walking down the sidewalk? It’s quick, it’s easy and, for the cheap college kid out there, it just makes cents.
doing this now.
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