> This dude's car breaks down and he gives up on university?
That is life-changing when you're in poverty. Fuck, walk a mile in someone else's shoes. Housing is cheaper ten miles out; walk _twenty_ miles in someone else's _disintegrating_ shoes. Carrying books, on a poverty diet.
You don't have to accept the claim as definite fact, but have some fucking imagination.
> Why is his mother filling out paperwork?
As far as i can see from outside America, these things are addressed to the parent. They require proof of financial status, and a signature. The guy is presumably miles away. Perhaps the mother promises to do it, but lets him down. Perhaps she's spiteful. Perhaps she's afflicted. I personally know people whose parents have done horrible things to them.
You don't know, but you reflexively deny. Comes across as motivated reasoning. You earned everything you have through hard work and intelligence, huh? Started from zero, and there's no number lower than that. Good job, achiever.
Maybe this guy is morally defective for not intercepting his mother's mail and breaking into a kinko's at night to forge documents. I suspect he'd face harsher penalties than Gates for that rule-breaking.
I have seen rural poverty in America. I have seen people walking miles to sit in a tin shack for a nurse who comes once a week. I sat my white ass down in my branded jeans next to a woman with goitre. I sat for twenty minutes while i figured out that this wasn't a place i could get travel shots. I had the grace to feel shame - give it a try.