I would killed to have freshman year be 13th grade. It was more like 100,000th grade!
Dear ** NinjaChick**,
You are burnt out, your studies are intense, you feel confident about your abilities and skills, you plan to take a major that is not time dependent, and you need a break.
Take the year off. See the world. Center yourself and really focus on the things that would make you happy. Do the things you want to do for the rest of your life. Use College as a stepping stone to achieve that goal. But dont delay it too long. Time waits for no man or woman.
I was in your position a year ago. I really didn’t know what I wanted to do, but I was still pretty sure I wanted to go to school. I was a “big fish in a little pond” in high school, as you are. Straight A’s, AP classes, sports captain, all-state stuff, etc… I narrowed my school choices down to three: two were smaller liberal arts colleges in-state, and the other one was a larger, selective, nationally recognized out-of-state school. Now, I knew whatever college I went to wouldn’t be as easy as high school, but there was a considerable jump in academic rigor from the smaller two to the larger one. I decided to go to the larger, more rigorous school. I’m now a “big fish in an enormous pond.” My class is only about 2,000 people, but everyone here is good at whatever they do. There are no class clowns or guys playing off key in the band. I went from being top of the class in high school to middle of the road. It’s quite a humbling experience. Also, as everyone has been saying, the social atmosphere is way different compared to high school. It’s cool to have people always around to play foosball with or to go see Salman Rushdie speak. Just recently I joined a fraternity. When I came here the thought of going Greek wasn’t even in my head. Now, I get emails with things to go to and do nearly every night. The tuition here is somewhere around $36,000 a year. However, my family can’t even come close to paying it. For most schools, if you want to go there, the WILL find a way for you to pay for it. Of the $36,000 I think we pay about $9,000, the rest comes from financial aid provided by the school. I have two midterms on Thursday, so I better get going. Just thought I’d give my input. Good luck.
Wow. I just realized that in the few hours since I’ve posted this, a stronger pro-college case has been made than has been in the past 11 years of my formal education. In the past, it’s always been “…because that’s what society expects of ‘good people’” which is usually enough of a reason for me NOT to do something.
I haven’t ruled out going to college. I have ruled out going to college right after high school, and I’m getting close to ruling out college in the US (many reasons for that, the main one being college everywhere else isn’t as insanely expensive). My grades have been slipping, due to my growing disenchantment with the conveyor-belt approach to education that’s been forced down my throat.
Keweenaw - mad props to your wife from me. I do try to realize how much I take for granted, but tend to loose sight of it sometimes (by my town’s standards, my family is poor, but everything’s relative, no?). Sorry if I irritated you.
KarlGrenze: IIRC, an IB diploma is equal to taking a bunch of AP courses - I’ve always been told that it’s the equivalent of maybe the first year of a 4-year degree. Just wondering where you got that info from?
msmith537 - Sort of a nitpick, but could you define ‘good school’? I’m not looking at any major name schools, partly because I don’t want a school larger than, say, 6000 students, but also because the more selective, the lower the chance of getting a good aide package. Everyone always talks about ‘good’ schools - how is this defined?
Is it possible for you to cut back on some of your activities? Because you’re going to wear yourself out!
I’ll just say it again, in case you missed it, try to apply next year anyway. You can defer admissions for at least a year, sometimes longer. I can’t emphasize it enough.
I don’t know where you got the idea that college has to be so “insanely” expensive. Frankly, it doesn’t sound like you have done all that much research on the subject. If your grades are as good as you say they are you will be eligible for a scholarship, also, almost every school will meet your “demonstrated need” through a combination of grants and loans. If money is still tight, consider going to a rural school, where costs of living are lower. Don’t go out of this country to get your education as a way of saving money. You don’t need to do that.
After working in a tire warehouse and on various labor jobs, I realized that DID not want to do that for the rest of my life. Then when I went back to school I studied hard, and I am SO glad I did.
I was nerdy in high school. It was only in college that I met a lot of people who were like me, who understood me, and who I wanted to be with.
College is over rated. Most of my friends have gone to college. My college friends all have degrees, one of them even has a masters. None of them realy use their degrees. 1 was going to be a teacher. He got all of his certifications done. He hasnt been back into any kind of class room since. He has managed a rental car shop in Florida for the past 6 years since he got done with school. I have another friend who has an art degree. He is a recruter for the Navy and is not planning on geting out before his 20 yrs are up. I have a friend with an english degree. The last time I spoke with her she was working in a book store and as a proof reader , checking for spelling mistakes. She might be useing her degree a little, but you average high school kid can check for spelling errors. It doesnt take 6 years of college.
I have never seen a need for me to go to college , either. I work as a chef and with my work expierience I usualy make more than people the same age as me who have gone to “culinary school”. Unless you want to do something that is very complex , like being in the medical field or being in the technology field, you might not need to go to college. It might just turn out to be a huge waste of time like it was for my friends.
Is this deliberate irony?
Because you can place out of many core classes, and (at the school I go to) even if they don’t give you credit for the courses, you are placed out of courses…effectively landing as a sophomore-almost-junior in some cases. For spending a year of full study (or less) in a CC, perhaps you can take the year (or two) off and go to college directly afterwards. That is, unless the CC offers some professional course you are interested in taking.
Jesus, college can be one of the greatest experiences you’ll ever had, regardless of whether you use it or not. Christ, you can major in beer and bonking and still graduate and have that piece of paper that says you accomplished something. Oddly enough, when you find something worth learning or that stimulates you, then you’ll love it.
Maybe you’re a good writer, but from your post there is a long way to go before you become a great writer. Most great writers need experience, and college is one place to gain that experience. JD Salinger explained this in one of his short stories with his brother as the narrator.
Don’t know you’re economic situation, but if you’ve got the cash, travel in the summer and school 8 months a year ain’t a bad way to go. If you’re on a budget, put a year or two under your belt, and then take a year off.
Not much new to add, but I’ll second some of what’s been said. Like monstro, I teach undergrads, and some of my students are not college material. There are a few who are just not bright enough, not intellectually curious enough to realize the value of a university education. Still, they do enough of their assignments to pass, and they’ll graduate with degrees. And they, dull-witted as they may be, will have far more opportunities in life than you, if you don’t go to college. They won’t be smarter than you, but they’ll get in the door, and you sometimes won’t.
Once you get in the door, you can use all these natural talents and gifts to do well, to do good, to do whatever you want. But without a degree–at least a Bachelor’s–there are many doors you can’t go through.
Like Keweenaw’s wife, I was the first in my family to go to college. College was always considered something for rich kids, not for us. I assumed, without actually doing any research on my own, that college was too expensive for me. Wrong! By the time I started, I was well into my twenties, divorced, and paying child support. How much more affordable would it have been if I had gone when I had only myself to support? Scholarships, grants, loans, work-study jobs–they are available, if you’re willing to fill out the paperwork and wait in line.
And like you, NinjaChick, I was told since middle school that I had a knack for writing. In high school, my teachers often encouraged me to send things away for publication, but I lacked the confidence even to try. My talent for writing came in surprisingly un-handy on the assembly lines where I went to work after high school. Years later, my university professors also admitted that my writing was good, but they showed me ways to make it better. More importantly, I discovered some ways to make my thinking better. I don’t doubt that you’re smart, smarter than I was at your age. But there is a whole lot more to learn. Yes, you can learn some of it in the “real world,” without college. But without the credentials, you will have far fewer opportunities to use what you learn.
There are plenty of smart people with no degree, and plenty of morons with multiple degrees. To me, smarts are more important than credentials, but much of the world disagrees. Why not get both? How many people can you find who regret going to college? How many who regret not going?
originaly by :Rhum Runner
Nope. IMHO you should have a LOT more to show after 6 years of college that a job where you only make $8 an hour. You can make $8 an hour at pizza hut and put the $30,000 that was wasted on school towards something usefull. Maybe a house or starting a business.
BURNER, I think if you did a survey you’d find that fewer people than you think truly “use” their degree, that is, work in the field they majored in.
Keep in mind that the state of the economy and the nature of the field you go into are going to affect whether you can get away with not having a degree and how easily you can get a job once you graduate. Throw in the fact that sometimes people lose interest in the subject they studied, and you’re going to have quite a few people with “unused” degrees. This doesn’t mean the degree is worthless; it just wasn’t used to its greatest potential.
To counter your anecdotal evidence, all of my friends have degrees, and the vast majority have jobs in the fields they studied. None of them could have gotten their jobs if they didn’t have their degrees.
Thanks for the clarification Burner! I think you made my point for me, again.
NinjaChick, believe it or not, me and you have a lot in common right now. Even though I’m 25 and you’re in your teens.
I’m about to wrap up my last year in vet school. My ass has been in school for…(counting on fingers)… 21 freakin’ consecutive years. And it has not been easy street. High school was a blur of orchestra rehearsals, academic team practice, rigorous AP courses, tutoring sessions to elementary kids, tests, tests, and more tests. When I was a junior, I looked forward to senior year with the kind of dread us girls experience when anticipating an especially bad and bloody period. Why? Because I knew it would be a shit storm of college applications and SAT stress. But I always knew college was the ONLY option for me, because there was nothing in the whole world that I wanted to be more than a veterinarian.
So I went to college. Went to a hard-ass college, too. At moments it felt a little like hell being there. For the first two years, the classes were hard and boring, and the student body was completely unlike my HS schoolmates. Sometimes I felt like an alien from outer space, and other times I felt downright invisible.
It wasn’t all misery, though. Sometimes the storm clouds would lift and I would enjoy myself. Never really got to have the complete American College Experience, though. Even to this day I wonder how diferently my life would have turned out if I had gone to a “party school” instead of Georgia Tech.
After saying all that, do I regret going there? HELL NO! It made me a better person, going through that. I’m glad I toughed it out, if anything because it took a whole lot of mental fortitude to do it and I proved to myself that I have it. But perhaps more importantly, it helped get me to vet school. It helped me get to where I wanted to be since waaaay back in middle school.
I won’t bore you with the details of vet school, but let’s just say, it’s very hard. But because it’s what I’ve always wanted to do, it’s not hard in a “I want to kill myself RIGHT NOW” kind of way. More like hard in a “must suppress urge to play on the computer when I should be learning renal physiology” kind of way.
And yet, even though I like it, I am steadily feeling burned out on school. My brain feels like it has been minced and lightly sauteed in a big old Crisco-coated skillet. My life feels put on hold because I don’t have the sense of living in the “real world”. I’m sick of sacrificing a social life so that I can get a good grade on a test. I’m sick of being poor. I’m sick of taking notes and studying, and feeling that nagging sense of guilt when I’m not studying. There are so many things that I’m sick of!
So good thing I’m about to be done with vet school, so I can be free of school, right? Wrong!!! People keep pressuring me to go to grad school, can you believe it? As if a frickin’ doctorate isn’t enough already? And silly me, I’m listening to them! Even though I KNOW that I’m burned out.
What is my message for you? Well, I’m not really sure, to tell you the truth. All I know is that I’ve been in school almost twice as long as you, and if I’m seriously contemplating more school–as truly burned out as I think I am–then you should, too. You may be an amazingly resourceful, creative, ambitious, turn-straw-into-gold kind of individual, but honestly, you’ll be removing yourself from so many opportunities by not going to college. As hard as undergrad was for me socially and academically, I don’t regret doing it. As hard as vet school was, I don’t regret it. So if I do go on to grad school, I will probably not regret that decision.
Hope I didn’t add to your stress level. Just make sure you don’t let stress keep you from keeping all your options open.
But unless you’re rich, you never really had $30K. It wasn’t just lying around. The money might be little more than scholarships and loans. You can’t put that money towards something else, because you never really had it to begin with.
Also, I think you’re overestimating how far $8 an hour can be stretched, as well as how long you’ll be satisfied with it.
On the other hand, you could stay out of school and hope to find a man with a good, steady job to pay for your kids’ clothes and schooling. You don’t feel a strong need for independence, right?
[sub]ducking flames[/sub]
Oh yeah–I got a chuckle out of this. And I tend to agree–but then again, NinjaChick is a junior in high school. One way or another, her outlook will probably change. Mine certainly has!
College is never a waste of time. In fact for many it is the best time of their lives. If BURNER’s friends wasted their time in college then they didn’t do it right. Just because some people don’t use their degrees is no reason to lock yourself out of jobs that require a degree. It’s all about options.