Applicant #10: Stephen Curran

Stephen Curran is a 21-year-old from Mt. Brydges.

Stephen's video application:

Stephen online:

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Stephen's current situation:

Hi, my name is Stephen Curran, I am a student filmmaker from Mt. Brydges, Ontario. I am currently working part time, and making short films and videos the other half of the time. I highly enjoy writing short videos and stories, and typically make them into short projects to do in my spare time. I very much enjoy using computers and strive to go into visual effects and post production in the film industry when I graduate from college. I go to Humber College in Toronto during the school year, and live with my family during the summers, paying off my debt (much thanks to my coach for helping me figure that stuff out). I am excited for the opportunity to be a spokesperson for the generation I am very much a part of. I have been searching for my place in the world for a long time, and have had to finance most of my journey by myself. I hope that this experience would allow me to be a good spokesperson and role model, given the position of Young and Free Ontario Spokesperson. All and all I am excited to be here, and can't wait to meet my fellow applicants.

Stephen's blog post:

My generation is one of extreme promise. I can’t help but feel excited for the future, if only just to meet the people who inhabit it, the people I can say I shared a time with, a similar feeling, a time when they were going through the same things I was going through. There is so much potential, so much freedom in the future, yet people always say that they feel tied down.

I always hear my fellow students say that they feel they would do so much better had they the finances to do their school work without worrying about paying rent, buying food, or going to work. That their freedom is taken away by the numbers on a sheet of paper, underlined in red, the endless piles of numbered papers staring at them while they study, always wanting more.

I feel that this should be different. Money should never be a barrier to the amazing future that all of us are hurtling towards. Today’s students should have more knowledge of what they can do to release the tension of unpaid bills. Not only that, but I feel banks should help students, not pull them down. I love that I have a Libro account because they actually help me on my journey, help me find the perfect place for my sometimes small pay checks, and reduce the amount I have to pay them, so that I can pay the others who fill my budget. Although, I feel more banks should be doing this.

Too many times I have seen brilliant people, with bright futures, disallowed to continue their education or training, because of money. Either they can’t afford to pay the tuition, can’t afford to live in the city that their future lies in, or they require the funds to continue on the path they have chosen because of some other, otherwise unforeseen financial situation. It sickens me that these people with such potential, such drive, such a brilliant future, must stand behind the fence and watch as their more financially healthy peers continue without persecution.

With a bright future ahead, we will need plenty of equally luminescent people to lead the way forward. If I hear that our future leader would not be joining us in our journey into the unknown, because he couldn’t pay his tuition, I feel it will be a bleak future indeed. Because freedom is not staying behind to pay a bank to allow you to progress, freedom is progressing.

Stephen