soooo one thing i've been thinking about lately is
going back to school. i quit school to move to philadelphia, with about 2.5 years under my belt, and realized when i got here that
i'd basically never be able to afford to go back (as a teenager, based on my family income of like.. 14k/year, i got really sweet grants and basically got paid to go to school. i mean, like, an excess of $2k/year, and not enough that i could quit working, but that felt like millions at the time). a few years after moving here (2006 !) i got a job at a university that offers
full tuition benefits, and
incidentally has a program where certain degrees can be obtained entirely after work hours.
i was disheartened to find that my
clown college credits from florida barely transfer- a handful of classes do, and about half only transfer as electives (!!!), so i basically have to start from scratch. i guess that's good though because i have decided to switch from pursuing chemistry to
history.
i
feel really stupid for not taking advantage of these benefits before- i've started the registration process and
sort of trailed off several times before. i was thinking about it the other day and it really struck me that i would've killed for this opportunity when i was 18 and that my mom would've killed for it to while going into
extreme student loan debt and probably aging herself a million years while trying to work full time, raise two kids by herself, and go to school in her 40s, and that most people do not get opportunities like this.
i also have
no false illusions about the usefulness of a history degree. i'm pretty happy with the field i'm in now, which is one of those fields that bafflingly requires "a degree" (in anything), so i basically will just get to study something i'm interested in and see what i can do with it on
a personal, if not professional, level, and possibly make more at my current job because i got the degree.
on another note, here's
a video of my little cousin setting himself on fire that appeared on court tv !
roxy this is so awesome <3
ReplyDeletego for it. when you go to college older, you have a better focus of what you want to pursue and what you want to do.
ReplyDeletegood luck!!!
thank you, i hope i actually do it ! i promised myself i'd write my essays on my lunch break but i've been so annoyingly busy today D:
ReplyDeletethanks for the support, nicole- i'm afraid of being the old lady in class !
ReplyDeleteI like this idea a lot, especially since I want you to pass on history nuggets to me.
ReplyDeleteAlso, Nicole is right on. Older students definitely 'get it' with college in a way that many younger students don't because college is just The Thing You Do After High School Who Knows Why.
as one of the old ladies in class, you realize what dufuses? dufi? teenagers are and you will have better focus on your classes. and really want to learn. not appease your parents who only allow you to live with them rent free if you go to school. plus, it being later in life, you have a better grasp on your interests.
ReplyDeletei mean, when i was 18, i was going to school to own a record store! HA!
this is good! i should have taken advantage of tuition remission way earlier, but whatever, now i'm out of that crappy job and in school full time and i don't have to take as full of a load because of the classes i took while i was still an employee! if you want i can send you my admission essay...it deals with the fact that i was returning to school after many years AND that my transcript was full of incompletes and withdrawals.
ReplyDelete