Why not pay me $5000 a year? This is the question I have put to countless–well, two–scholarship committees since early April. Neither committee has, as of yet, bothered to respond. I am beginning to suspect that including that tape of myself playing "Bess, You Is My Woman Now" on the circular saw among my applications materials was a miscalculation.

For reasons they have not seen fit to reveal, the FAFSA board has determined that my parents can suddenly afford to pay 50 percent more than they were able to shoulder this year, despite having seen no corresponding increase–no increase at all, actually–in property or income. Either I misplaced a decimal point, or else under the category of "assets," instead of writing "none," I accidentally wrote "yacht."

As a matter of fact our chief asset has only depreciated in value since I started college, when my Kirby Puckett rookie card (1985 Topps, #364) was appraised at an all-time high of $24. Its value has since dropped below ten dollars, and I am surprised that the FAFSA board has failed to take this minor catastrophe into account.

Anyhow, since my mother has raised some kind of ethical objection to taking an under-the-table job at the local staple factory, I find myself looking for other ways to supplement my financial aid. Lately I’ve started looking for outside scholarships.

Every year media outlets announce that hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of scholarships are going unclaimed. They fail to note, however, that most of these scholarships a) are limited to a relatively small pool of applicants or b) require that the recipient attend a school of the scholarship committee’s choice, which usually turns out to be the "Classy" Freddie Blassie Institute of Stenography and Motorcycle Repair.

Among the former group, most awards are only available to minority students. Not that I am complaining, of course; being descended chiefly from English and Irish stock, my ancestors were never oppressed by anybody, except possibly Vikings.

No, I’m irritated by those so-called "freak of nature" scholarships, donated by philanthropists who wish to subsidize only those students who remind them of themselves. Hence the awards available exclusively to left-handed teetotaling squash players, for instance, and ambidextrous but prematurely arthritic Swedes from Bucks County, PA. I can go upwards of four minutes without blinking, but so far this has failed to impress anybody.

Unfortunately, these points have failed to register with my mother, who recently sent me a scholarship book called, if I remember correctly, The Scholarship Book. She called last week to see if I had been using it.

"What book?" I asked.

"You didn’t lose it, did you?"

"No," I lied. On the contrary, I know exactly where it is. It’s in my room. So are a lot of other long-lost items, like my ATM card and Video Paradiso’s copy of Vertigo and the handwritten manuscript of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s last completed novel. I made the mistake of buying a Sunday Times this month and now sections G through K have mysteriously spread themselves across the floor as a result of what I can only assume to be an extremely localized case of continental drift. I can only hope that the book will reappear on its own, bobbing to the surface like a man adrift in a sea of classified ads.

I did manage to submit a couple of applications before the Times swallowed my book. Why I bothered, I do not know, since my grades reflect my unfortunate tendency, in times of crisis, to curl up under my desk and fall asleep. I am not helped by the fact that my main argument for my worthiness as a potential scholarship recipient boils down to "at least it’ll keep me off the streets."

A few committees claim to be looking for promising writers. I have made more promises than any writer I know, but I wasn’t sure if I had any samples worthy of submission. "Why don’t you look through your files?" my mother suggested. "You must have something buried in there."

I was rifling through my files for a good half hour before I remembered that I did not have any files, on account of I had not written a single piece of fiction since 1996, that lone sample being a hastily scrawled note to my history teacher explaining why I had not attended her class in six days. "Dear Mrs. Shillingburg," it read, "Amanda had a disease. Please do not ask me what it was. Signed, Dr. X." I considered expanding it into a three-act play but ultimately decided that I would profit more by napping until the weekend. Then I napped through the weekend. Then I napped a few more days, just in case. It was the best Spring Break ever.

Maybe next year I’ll take a semester off and sleep to my irritating little heart’s content. Maybe I’ll go back to high school and start all over again under an assumed name. I could dye my hair and wear a veil, claiming some sort of horrible acid-related disfigurement. Although the fact that I think that faking a horrible acid-related disfigurement is a good idea may go a long way towards explaining why I am unable to convince anybody to give me any money in the first place.