If you happen to be a person on the younger end of the spectrum, I have some advice for you: Don’t wait for a better time to go to college. Go now.
Like many others I started college right out of high school, but then dropped out after a few months. The main reason was money. There were probably many opportunities for scholarships, loans and grants, but I wasn’t aware of them at the time. I thought I was trying to “work my way thru” but in actuality I was working nights and sleeping in class. It’s really hard to keep up in math when you’re sleeping thru class!
During two hitches in the Air Force I took some classes at a community college. Afterwards I tried the full-time work / full-time school thing again, but by now I had a wife and two small children and there were simply not enough hours in the day to do all I needed to do. I cut school back to part-time, and eventually put it back on hold again.
During the next 25 years or so I took a few classes here and there. There was a year-long stint in a degree completion program at a major university. I took a few classes online. It seemed that every few years I’d talk myself into starting again, only to find too many other things in my life competing for my time and money. There are courses on my transcript from at least ten different schools.
And now, I’m back at it again, working and going to school full-time. I love learning, and I don’t mind working, but let me be brutally honest - trying to do justice to both at the the same time sucks.
Yes, it is possible that you may be one of those people who will succeed without college. There are folks who manage to live happy lives without a college education, but I’ll wager you’re not one of them.
So, take my advice: don’t wait.
Get a grant, get a loan, apply for a scholarship, join the ROTC, whatever, but do it now.
