I spent my entire college fund and I have no regrets

[YMZ PE]

Fun sucker!!!

Sorry about that. Allow me to course correct.

 

[Supe]

As much as I'd like to agree with you, YMZ, this girl is a f*cking moron. I entered college at 17, and even at that age, I understood that 90 f*cking grand was a sh*tload of money. Hell, I would feel guilty going to the vending machines with cash after missing dinner at the mess hall because it would have been covered by my meal plan!

 

[Ramnares P.E.]

No apologies needed EG, the whole point of this is to open the discussion

Agree with Supe and I knew that guilty feeling all too well.

 

[csb]

I'm going to be a jerk here and say that I rolled my eyes at most of the comments above dissing this kid. We've all made poor financial decisions, and we've all resented people who didn't give us what we felt we were owed. And we've all argued with people who tried to give us advice because we were confused and scared. I agree with RG, it's inspiring to read about how resilient and self-reliant many of you are. But it's totally unfair to call someone else an idiot for learning a life lesson at a different stage of life than you did. If she made the same mistake over and over again, that would be a different story.

And $20k in the hole for a degree isn't nearly as bad as some of the car purchases I've seen people make...

This is why I won't buy a car.

Going back to "not ready" and me trying to drop out- neither of my parents have a BA or BS. My dad spent 22 years in the AF. He was taking some night school classes in his 20s and decided to "take a break" that resulted in him not going back to school until he was 50. That was a powerful lesson to hear when I was trying to just give up on school. I had been thinking, "Well my parents seem to be doing okay, and they don't have degrees."

I was brutally homesick when I went to college, which I wasn't prepared for at all. My parents let me lead a pretty independent life, but there definite rules in place. Heading to a place with very few rules was hard (which highlights what a goody goody I was). I threw myself into coursework, taking 18 credit hours a semester, only to realize, two years into it, that I didn't know what to do with my major (Geology). I made a course correction to Civil Engineering and got my ass handed to me. My GPA went from honor roll (I was even in an honor society) to C's. All along my parents were telling me to hang in there and that it would be worth it. I luckily had friends who came from homes where their parents had college degrees, so I was surrounded by a group who saw it was worth it.