A first gen college student fundraising for a new laptop

Hi,

My name is Yan Jing. I am fundraising for buying a new laptop that will support me for my studies in the U.S. as a Master of Public Health student.

Little background of myself, I come from a small family that made up of my both parents, and a younger brother, who will also be starting his college as a Bachelor of Science in Physics in Taiwan. I was born and raised in Malaysia for my whole life until I graduated from high school. Due to financial difficulties of their families, both of my parents only completed middle school (my mom) and high school (my dad). They work as sub-contractors in the construction field to feed and raise us.

Since young, they taught me that: in order to have a better life, you need to study hard and get good results. By the grace of God, I passed my high school exams with flying colours and received a great amount of scholarship to pursue my Bachelor's degree at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. I was, and still am (until this moment), the first child among my extended family to study abroad. I graduated in July 2021, with the First Honors BSc degree in Food and Nutritional Sciences.

I worked for a year after I graduated from my college because my parents were not able to support my Master's degree since it is very very expensive. I was looking to pursue a Master's degree that will allow me to understand more on different factors impacting the nutritional knowledge, status and intake of the whole population, especially in underprivileged communities and third world countries, and hoping to make a difference for people in my home country, Malaysia.

Praise God, I got a 50% scholarship from the University of Michigan to study MPH in Nutritional Sciences (Dietetics concentration)! Although I've received 50% scholarship, the other 50% and living fees in the U.S. is still a great burden to my parents, who are close to their 60s (it's estimated that I still need to pay around $58,000 USD for all the remaining costs), and my younger brother is starting his college at the same time too.

I am actively searching for Graduate Student Staff Assistant/Teaching Instructor/Research Assistant jobs in the University of Michigan, and also part time jobs to support my living costs and reduce my parents burden. However, since I am a freshman, and also an international student, the chances are not high that I will get these supports at the first semester.

Nonetheless, I desperately need a new laptop for the beginning of my first semester since my old laptop (an HP laptop that is 5 years-old) is not working anymore, and it's specs will not be able to meet the requirements for my academic needs, including running data analysis softwares, programming, etc. I am hoping to fundraise for a new MacBook Air 2022, with the specs (i.e. upgrade to 16GB RAM and maybe 512GB SSD too) that is able to support the running of these different softwares.

Your kindness will support me for a better academic experience and learning quality. Thank you for reading this long text and for your consideration. God bless you!?

I would be happy if you could use the [Help by sharing] button to share about my project!