StarOriole

Let's use tuition of $50,000 for a round number. 8 courses a year means about $6,000 per course. 3 papers per course means you're paying an extra $600 per course, or a 10% increase over normal tuition.

Alternatively: $6,000 in tuition per course with 15 weeks per semester and 3 lectures per week means about $140 per lecture. It's about the same amount of wasted money to sleep through a class as to get out of writing a paper.

College is so expensive that I can easily see an extra 10% seeming meaningless.

What are your skills?

Can you speak and write English? Maybe you could run an English literacy group at your local library or local church -- or a resume-writing workshop, or a GED prep class, or a "how to check your email" class for seniors.

Can you change a flat tire? Maybe you can stop the next time you see someone on the side of the road.

Can you pick vegetables? Maybe you can work with your local food bank to get the leftover vegetables from farms that the mechanical harvesters couldn't pick.

Can you shovel snow? Maybe you can help out an elderly neighbor, or a neighbor with a new baby, or on their religious day of rest.

Can you do web design? Maybe you can help the animal shelter set up a webpage to highlight their adoptable animals.

Some of these are easier than others. I've never had a neighbor complain about me shoveling their sidewalk for them on the sabbath, but putting a "free English conversation on Tuesday nights" sign outside a church might result in you sitting there alone for a few weeks. Creating your own opportunities to help can be hard, but sometimes you can create a movement.

If that's the only problem, is your vision good enough to be corrected to 20/20 with glasses? I'm 20/400 in one eye and 20/800 in the other without correction, but glasses work fine for me. Are there other issues at play than just nearsightedness?

Edit: Nevermind, I see you answered this below. Thanks for the detailed explanation!

I've heard white, clean-shaven men complaining about being disproportionally checked, under the theory that they're getting extra screening to make it look like the TSA isn't biased against Middle Easterners. Women complain that they get screened a disproportionate amount because the TSA officers want to ogle or fondle them.

Basically, I've heard members of every demographic group complain that they get an unfair amount of extra screening for some reason or another. Without knowing the statistics, it's hard to know if one group is right or if it's all just confirmation bias.