"A Story to Tell"

Please don’t make the same mistake that I did. The first time I started college, I was fresh out of high school and my head was filled with big dreams. Freshman year wasn’t quite what I was expecting, but I thought I’d give college another year to live up to my expectations. During my sophomore year, while I was waiting for my college dreams to come true, my roommate dropped out, moved to Omaha and got a primo job at Victoria’s Secret. She had her own apartment, and seemed to have her own life. In a time when the thing I most desperately wanted was to feel like an independent adult, she seemed very grown-up to me. My mind was boggled--she had dropped out of college and somehow, she had a better life than I did. In high school, guidance counselors preached that people with college educations got the good life, how did my college drop-out friend have it so together?

One semester and much soul-searching later, I followed her lead, but didn‘t end up with the glamorous life that I had imagined for myself. I started out working a summer job that I prayed would turn permanent. It never did. I worked for a temp agency for a little while before landing a job as a receptionist. While working there, I met a woman who had no college education, but who had managed, with a series of excellent career moves, to work her way up the ladder and become the business manager of this office. She was respected by everyone and had an incredible talent for managing clients and employees alike. During the time that I worked for her, and for about a year after leaving that company, I believed that I could do the same thing that she had done.

Fast forward 5 years. I finally came to the conclusion that I simply don’t have the patience to climb a ladder into management. Why should I wait for opportunities to come to me when I could simply finish college and seek my own opportunities? So, I did one of the scariest things any adult can do. I went back to college.

The life I ended up with isn’t half bad. In all honesty, I’m happy with it. I have a pretty good job. Actually, I have three pretty good jobs--one full-time, the other two part-time. At the rate I’m going, one or two classes per semester, I’ll be lucky to graduate by the time I’m 35. I can’t go back to school full-time because I would have too many bills that I couldn’t afford to pay. I can’t leave my job to find something that pays better because, with my limited skills and no degree, I’m already making more than I should.

I’m not unhappy with my life and I certainly don’t ask for sympathy. These are the decisions I made at a time in my life when I thought I was extremely wise and there’s nothing that can be done for it anymore, besides what I’m doing. I’m luckier than most because I AM able to work toward finishing my degree. I don’t regret anything that I’ve done, but sometimes I get scared that I’m going to be too old for much of a future when I do finally graduate college. So what I’m asking is for everyone who reads this to finish their education. I‘m happy with my life, but YOU deserve more. I want you to pursue it before you have to spend 8 years trying to get your Bachelor‘s degree while working three jobs. Let me say it again: finish your education. I know it sounds cliché, and I know it’s what your parents would tell you, and I apologize for that, but please, please, please don’t make the same mistake that I did. Please, finish your education.