14th
College for the Ancient
I am 28 years old. I really don’t think that’s too old, especially since I act like a 12 year old most days. Okay, I should say I have the sense of humor of a 12 year old, the temper tantrums of a 2 year old, and let’s say… the body of a wise 19 year old. Why not? It’s my blog, after all. If you want to disagree, get your own blog!
At any rate, my point is this: While I am in a city where I meet 42 year old coffee slingers living out their rockstar dreams in tiny bars all over the neighborhood, it is not a stretch that a 28 year old woman is finishing her first bachelor’s degree at Hunter College. Yet, I still feel guilty that I am just now a senior who has a whopping ten more classes before I get that one piece of paper that is supposed to open many beautiful gold encrusted Doors of Opportunity that until that very moment have been glued shut with the black tar of Uneducation. Of course, the fact that I have a job making more money (through hard work and charm) than I would if I was in an entry level college graduate position, is to be presently overlooked.
How did I get here? It’s very simple: Start out by being accepted into the Joint Enrollment Honors Program your senior year of high school so you get to go to college part-time and high school part-time - let this go to your head as if you are the only one in the history of the world to ever have been offered this honor, making you a pain to be around. Get a full-time job in the summer to show your parents that you are serious about making money and moving out. Discover credit cards at the same time. Since you work at a bank, scoff at all the poor souls with massive amounts of credit card debt while buying cell phones and magazine subscriptions and clothes and food with your new plastic.
Decide that going to college full-time would get in the way of making money. Work your tail off as a teller, getting underpaid and robbed, and go to school at night. Decide to never attend school in the summer. Take semesters off to go soul searching in hotel rooms across the country, making sure to pick up the tab, regardless of the amount of friends that are also staying in your room. Buy things, like snow gear and snowboards, even though you live in Georgia and only went snowboarding twice in fake snow in Gatlinburg, Tennessee.
Continue to buy things, like trips or gas (but nothing of actual value, God no!), with the 7 credit cards you have “earned”, and continue to take only up to 3 classes a semester, if you decide to go to school that semester. Go study improv comedy and devote your life to it. Take a year off to finally make that move to the city of your dreams and transfer to a school that you can apply to online without ever having to talk to someone in person. Start taking two classes a semester because you are working full-time and are also trying to build a social life, etc.
Join a debt management program, and start paying off your damn debt.
Start living within your means, and be humbled by the fact that you are the only person who cares that you are still attending school because yes, your friends and family love you, but it turns out that you are not the center of their world, and they actually don’t sit around thinking about you being in school for even a second of their day.
I must say, though I complain about having to “learn things” in the beginning of every single semester, by the end of it, I always feel like I’ve gone through something necessary and eye-opening. Damn it. Why can’t I sit here and be right? I guess because I am not educated enough to do that yet.
