... I did not know any other way, until I began college, where I worked three jobs while attending school my first year. I did this until I burned myself out falling asleep while standing on the train, or even at work or in class. My grades suffered and I realized I need to change some aspect of my life, or I would fall into the poverty stricken statistic like my mother. I thought Eherenreich would make a fool out of herself writing this book, when in fact she touched me where it hurt most. My feelings had finally been touched by an outsider. It is my belief that by carefully painting a devastatingly realistic portrait of the American lower class, Barbara Eherenreich exploits the government and forces the oblivious working middle class and those whom have never been poor, to open up their eyes and see the painstaking reality of it ...

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