Penn grad shares her tales of poverty

Being broke is perhaps not the way Ivy League students are usually envisioned, but a new book is changing the face of the average Penn girl.

Angela Nissel, a 1998 Penn graduate, recently published her book The Broke Diaries. The book is a collection of humorous anecdotes from her (many) years as a Penn student constantly strapped for cash.

And the acclaim the book has received is putting Nissel well on her way to never being broke again. The book has received the praise of such icons as comedian Chris Rock.

"I didn't really mean to ever do anything like this," Nissel said. "People ask me why I published this book? Well, because it was better than my temp job."

After graduating from Penn, Nissel started working for a temp agency in Philadelphia, and had really almost forgotten about the 30 or so pages of stories she had been putting on-line. But then someone from Random House approached her.

"When [Random House] first e-mailed me, I thought it was a scam," Nissel said. But eventually she headed to New York and met with some people from Random House's subsidiary, Villard.

"There were six people sitting around a table telling me how much they liked the book," she said. Nissel noted that, although the publishing process was an arduous one, the people she worked with were wonderful. The book took about two years to complete.

Nissel came to Penn in 1992, but had to take a semester off here and there before she finally graduated in 1998, majoring in medical anthropology.

"For a great part of my Penn career, I was just a loner. I was from Philly, so I just hung out with my old friends for a while," Nissel said.

Nissel grew up in southwest Philly, living alone with her mom.

At Penn, Nissel lived first in W.E.B. DuBois College House, then one of the high-rises and finally off-campus in an apartment complex students liked to call "the projects."

In the summer of 1997, Nissel finished up an internship with the news magazine show "Dateline NBC", and after working long hours for little pay there, Nissel returned to Penn to start what she termed her "brokest year."

That's when she decided to put some of the notes she had been keeping about her experiences as an impoverished student on-line. People started to log on to see her stories constantly.

"People would e-mail me pissed off, like `Where's the story for the day?'" she said.

Nissel's favorite passages from the book are the ones that were actually the most difficult to live through.

"The times that I hated going through the most are actually the ones I laugh at now," she said.

A typical story from The Broke Diaries includes the time she went on a date with a man she mysteriously calls "the chicken guy" just for some free food, and the time when her friend managed to steal all of the necessary textbooks for a semester.

That friend -- like Nissel herself -- was anxious about such embarrassing stories appearing in print.

Laughter was the best way to get through some of the toughest times, though.

"The stories would make me laugh, and the feedback and stories from other people I would get would make me laugh," Nissel said.

Despite the book's universal appeal, Nissel said many passages will be particularly amusing to Penn people.

Nissel is currently in Los Angeles working with a director to turn the book into both a sitcom and a film.

There are also some informal plans to write another book, maybe an inspirational one.

"I didn't know if my stories of Ramen would be inspirational. But it's not a cheesy inspirational book, just something young people will connect with."

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