Going back to college as an adult is not an easy thing. Calling the perspective colleges you are looking to attend, making sure that the credits will transfer. Making sure they got your transcripts. Then trying to get through to the financial aid office to make sure you have all the documents you need. It is also frustrating trying to get a hold of the people in different departments, waiting on hold for hours.
You begin to feel discouraged, and question why you even are wasting your time at these colleges. Feeling frustrated and defeated you wonder why you even wanted to go back in the first place, because no one seemed to care that you wanted to invest in yourself anyways.
I reminded of what I wrote yesterday, and what my Grandfather told me. You have to jump through hoops to get where you are going in life. Hours spent on the phone on hold so I can ask the financial aide officer three simple questions. An hour and a half and three people later trying to find out what happened to my transcripts.
At the end of the day feeling defeated, and like just another number. Just another student at a college.
Perhaps this is why I got frustrated with community colleges in the first place.
Calling private Universities however was a different experience. I did not have to wait on hold for hours. To them it seemed as if I wasn’t a number.
Then I remember the reasons I got frustrated when I was attending a community college in the first place. The large class sizes. The availability of the professor. It was hard to set meet with them during office hours, especially if other students already had appointments.
Perhaps college is a stale institution that needs to change along with the rest of the world. Times have changed. You have to work, sometimes before you graduate, to pay your bills. It is hard to make time for college when the institution itself seems to care very little about the economy and inflation.
We are privileged to live in the information age, where virtually anything is available with the click of a mouse. We have libraries, in which we can immerse ourselves with knowledge.
Many of life’s most important lessons, I learned outside of the classroom.
The one tough lesson I learned in college though was, don’t go unless all tuition is covered without loans.
That is a mistake I will not make again.
