Hello villagers, as you might have found out in my previous post, Kubo Queen and I went to college. Maybe you were wondering why I went in the first place, or what I think about college education in general. Well, exciting news, today I share with you the first part of what I wrote on the topic. It tells you why I went to college, what I did to make college worth pursuing, why I think it was worth it for me in the end, and a glimpse of the next part. So what are you waiting for? Read on!
In high school, I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do in life, and I didn’t know which career I should pursue for my future. I wasn’t one of the lucky ones — the ones who knew what they wanted to do at such a young age. All I knew then was that I had to go to college. I had to go because that was what high school students were told to do once high school was over. To be successful in life you had to have a college degree, they said. Well, I certainly didn’t want to be a failure, and so I went.
I was a terrible student in high school. I can’t recall what my GPA was when I graduated, but it was bad enough that taking the SAT would have been a waste of time for everyone involved, and I knew that no university would even accept me. Harvard? Berkeley? MIT? Chicago? Michigan??? No way, those schools didn’t even cross my mind, sir. The only real choice I had was to enroll at the local community college, take the general education classes (and, do well in them), and then transfer to the local state university to pursue a four-year degree (Bachelor’s degree). That, exactly, is what I did.
I enrolled at the local community college right after I finished high school. At the time, my plan was to study history so that I could teach it to high school kids. In other words, I wanted to become a high school history teacher. The reason why I wanted to do this was because I enjoyed and was good at history, and I thought that this was what I was passionate about. I wasn’t good at the sciences. I was terrible at math; I was placed in, like, Pre-Algebra (where variables x and y finally appeared) as my first math class at the community college. So the only logical decision for me was to go all-in with history. But, to this day, I’m really glad that I changed my mind and direction.
After about a year at the community college and many math courses under my belt, I realized, from the math courses I had taken, that math wasn’t all that bad. In fact, I even got A’s in all of the ones I had taken at that point. I’m not quite sure how that happened, but I suspect it’s because I, at some point, started enjoying math; like, I guess I was having fun pushing variables around and solving for them in equations. At this same time I had felt that the social sciences were becoming a bore; maybe because they weren’t challenging me in a way I wanted to be challenged. I also began feeling like I needed to make sure my education would be worth it in the future, financially. That was the turning point, and after much introspection about my goals for my education and where I would like to see myself in the future, I told myself that I needed to study something technical and lucrative (they often go hand-in-hand) — something that would put food on the table and help me pay for the student debt I would owe in the future.
I transferred to the state university in our city after two years and a half at the local community college. The thing is, I’m not really all that smart. However, doing well in math while I was a community college student gave me a boost of confidence. I thought I could hang in there and graduate, eventually. I didn’t want to be one of the students at the bottom of the pack, but I certainly didn’t need to be among the ones at the top either (that would just be a bonus). I was content at being in the middle. I just had to finish. It was definitely not a smooth ride, and there were moments when I seriously considered dropping out. Fortunately, I managed to stick it out and graduate. I graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in computer science with a minor in mathematics.
So, was college worth it? For me, the honest answer is yes, it was worth it. By the time I left the university, six months ago, I had racked up about $35k of student debt. I was very fortunate to land a software engineering job for $71k a year in the same city (this city has a lower-than-average cost-of-living) two months out of school. At the present time, my debt is a little less than $20k. In other words, I paid roughly $15k of student debt in about four months. I’m on track to pay it off in a year from the time I started my job, and after that I’ll have a lot of money to pay for the things I need to live and invest for my future. My standard of living is a lot higher now than before, and my earning potential is significantly higher with my degree. However, I’m not so sure if it will be worth it for you. If you are considering pursuing higher learning, then there are things you need to seriously think about. Things your high school teacher most likely swept under the rug. If you don’t think about these things, then not only might it not be worth it, it’s possible that you will have a difficult life once you finish it. So let’s discuss these things in the next part of this article.
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