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I'm turning 18 later this month and all I want for my birthday is for my family and me to be able to worry less about my tuition cost. I'm a 17-year-old boy, attending Boston Conservatory at Berklee this fall for a Bachelor's degree in Composition, and I would really appreciate you giving any amount possible to support a young black creator.

I've been composing classical music, contemporary piano music, pop, rock, and many other types of music since I was about 13. Music has always been the love of my life, so when deciding what I would major in, it seemed like an easy decision to make.

But tuition for Boston Conservatory (the school I am enrolled in) is around $45,000 per semester, and the school projects that there will be around $30,000 of other expenses, meaning that one semester at my dream school will leave me $75,000 in debt. Although I would attend another school just to lessen the cost, there aren't many schools that offer majors in Composition, and there are even fewer that offer a well-rounded education with a high success rate.

My family and I have already paid about $2,000 just to apply, for the housing deposit, and other fees, and I have already committed to about $6,000 of student loans, however, my father who does freelance resume writing for a living and I don't have many jobs available to me because I'm an inexperienced 17-year-old and the pandemic is causing a shortage of safe jobs for me to pursue. It's starting to feel like following my dreams is impossible. Even if I land my dream job, I may not ever be able to pay off my student loans.
Tell me how creative I am with that design.
Any amount you can provide to help keep me in school would ease the financial stress being put on my family and I.