Nobody tagged me for this meme (I don’t think!) , but plonkee started it. I’ve read many other’ ‘posts and decided to do my own. So I tag me, and if you want to participate, go tag yourself! Or, leave your story in comments.
Deciding to attend community college wasn’t only the best financial decision of my college career, it was one of the best life decisions I ever made.
After 13 years of public school I was burned out. I’d done the AP classes and the Drill team and DECA and Clique Avoidance and I was very much over all of it. I really didn’t want to attend college at all, but I knew that not only was a degree almost essential for success (and it really seemed that way in the 80’s) I actually wanted a degree. I just soooo didn’t want to go have to attend class to get it.
Then my Dad invited me to come to Florida and go to the local community college, aka Beer Can College. It was an opportunity to get to know my Dad better, attend a few classes and hit the beach. Dad was willing to foot the bill for my classes and my living expenses (he’d promised to rent me an apartment). It was a complete no-brainer.
At first it did not look like the best decision I’d ever made. First, I moved away from all of my friends and a life I was used to. I went from having a full social life to barely knowing a soul. Also, I did not get along with my stepmother. At all. I was living with them until we found an apartment for me (something that never came to fruition, by the way), and every day my stomach clenched as I drove up to the house.
And I was just not into school. At all. I spent two years going full time and only amassed ten credits. Ten. I never failed anything - in fact I had three A’s and one B. I simply lost interest and dropped classes constantly. Dad was paying, and I just wasn’t invested.
Then in the fall semester of my third year at Beer Can College a friend went on a student orientation to Florida State University and invited me along. I loved it. I wanted to go. But with only ten credits it wasn’t going to happen anytime soon.
The next week I had a session with my guidance counselor. She showed me how I could earn 55 credits and make it happen to go to FSU at the end of the coming summer. It would involve taking lots of classes in regular session and through both summer sessions, and finding ways to “clep out” of others (getting college credit for real life experience). She got my attention.
Suddenly I was a woman on a mission. I had a direction. I was excited and committed. I started paying for my own school, making a financial investment in my own future, though I did still live at my Dad’s.
I earned fifty-five credits that year, and got only one “B”. I didn’t ‘walk’ graduation, as I took classes up until the week before I left for FSU.
But I graduated Beer Can College Summa Cum Laude. And I was awarded a scholarship that covered all but $75 of my tuition per semester at FSU. My Dad paid my rent, gas, insurance and books, but I worked part time to pay everything else - food, phone, cable, water, electricity, entertainment, etc. I had to learn to budget and make my money last. This was really the start of my frugal ways. And by getting my AA at a community college I saved about 75% on tuition (versus FSU if I had gone there my first two years).
And I graduated without a penny in student loans.
If I hadn’t chosen to go to community college I’m not sure I would have gone to college at all, and I likely would have never completed my degree. But I did complete my degree, Cum Laude (it would have been Magna Cum Laude if FSU counted my Beer Can College grades in the ranking process), and that piece of paper is one of the most important pieces of paper I will ever own.
And in case you were wondering, my social life did improve. The people I met at Beer Can College are my best friends to this day, some 25 years later. One was the best man at our wedding, another is godfather to Son.
And I met Husband there. He was one of those best friends, though we would not date until many years later, and only married less than six years ago.
And since I stay home with Son and Husband supports us completely, I’m thinking you’ll agree that going to community college first was one of the best financial, and life decisions I’ve made to date.
