College Worries (and I’m not even officially IN college yet!)

 

I haven’t told you guys about all my college troubles yet, have I?  Guess what this means:  Yes, it’s time for another one of my serious blogs.  One of which I haven’t really done in awhile, unless you count my ADD-admittance blog a serious one.  Anyways, if you guys have been actually following my blogs, you’d know that I graduate early last month from high school.  Which is a good thing, but it’s also a bad thing if you think about it.  Because that means I’ll be going to college (hopefully).  I say hopefully because I’m not even sure if I’ll be able to attend it next month, but we’ll get to that later.

Let’s start from the beginning:

Part 1a: How I Came To Decide On My Major

This part was somewhat easy, but difficult at the same time.  You see, as most kids are in elementary school, they think they want to do one thing, and end up doing something else completely. Especially when it comes to careers.  Let me give you a comprehensive list of all the careers I wanted to be a part of since I was little:

• Veterinarian
• Doctor
• Teacher
  • Elementary
  • Middle / High School
  • Professor
  • Math Teacher
• Dolphin Trainer
• The –ologists
  • Paleontologist
  • Archaeologist
  • Anthropologist
  • Marine Biologist
• Lawyer
• Mythbuster
• President
• Actress
• Model
• Writer
• ETC….There are lots of others

As you can see, I never really made up my mind as to what I wanted to be.  Then I got to high school.  In 9th grade at my high school, they didn’t bother with college stuff yet.  They made us all take a CareerScope test to see what would be the best careers for us.  I have my opinions on this, and it’s that I don’t like it.  I see why taking those tests would be good for some people, because some people don’t know where the hell they’re gonna be in 5 years or what they want to do, and they like to take a test to see which direction they could go in.  Then there are the people who know exactly where they want to be and what they want to do.  And then, there are people like me.  People who kind of want to see a list of all the possible careers out there, and narrow it down from there.  I never got that opportunity, but it’s okay.  So they made us take this test.  And I have the scores somewhere, but I think my high points were in like communication.  Which kind of sucks since I’m not a huge fan of talking to people.  Not one-on-one at least. 

And then in 10th grade, they guidance counselor called me into her office (we were good pals throughout high school…I should tell you all about it sometime) and she asked me one simple question:

What do you want to major in?

Now, it would have been too easy to say “I don’t know”, but thinking back, maybe I should have said I don’t know.  She might have guided me to something I would love.  Or, maybe she would have just looked at my CareerScope results and told me go to on a radio talk-show or something. Who knows? It doesn’t matter because I didn’t say “I don’t know” when she asked me about my major.  I had said “Forensic Science”.  Ever since then, I have been driven to want to pursue this profession.  When I had said this to my guidance counselor, it was then that I realized what I was truly passionate about.

Now I look back on it, and realize just how interested I’ve been in Forensic Science from the beginning.

In elementary school, I was in the gifted program and got to participate in a summer thing at Gettysburg College (you guys probably know Gettysburg if you paid attention in history class…or know anything about the Civil War…or live in Pennsylvania….or just know basic knowledge about the geographics of the US).  My first choice for a program was chemistry, and my second was forensic science.  I had never watched CSI and I didn’t know what forensic science was, but my dad told me it should be my second choice.  So, I ended up in the forensic science class in 4th or 5th grade at college.  And I had a blast.  It was all so fascinating to me!

Then a few years later I watched CSI and fell in love even more with the idea of the profession.

I also had thought off-and-on that it would be a good career because I’m so logical about everything.

And unlike being a doctor, you’re not the one who is dealing with making sure a person lives…you deal with people who are (98% of the time) already dead!

So when push came to shove, it turns out that the dream career of mine was Forensic Science.

 

Part 1b: SAT’s

Let me start by saying this…TAKE YOUR SAT’S YOUR JUNIOR YEAR!!!  I waited until December of my senior year to take my first SAT test.  And I mean I’m smart so my scores were decent, but I still wish I would have done them sooner.  So take it from someone who is a procrastinator and get them out of the way.

My scores were this thought:  Math: 610, Reading: 540,  Writing: 620

And honestly…my SAT scores are what pushed me to apply for colleges.  Because I was waiting to see what they were before I even started to apply…I don’t know why but as soon as I got my scores back, I was like “Hey! Now apply!” And so I did.

Okay this section made more sense in my head.  On paper it sounds really dumb and spastic. But, what would a blog of mine be defined as if it didn’t have at least ONE section that was a little off-kilter, right?

 

Part 2: How I Picked My College(s)

Let me start off Part 2 by saying this: If you’re a senior and haven’t started looking at colleges…you’re setting yourself up for a lot of trouble (I know from experience).  If you’re a junior and haven’t started looking at colleges yet…GET ON IT!!! You’ve probably been harassed enough by your teachers about this matter, but it really is one of importance.  That is, if you’re attending college. If you’ve decided to go into the workforce or military then you can just ignore this little paragraph.

So I started looking at college officially Christmas break of my senior year.  Dumb. Move.  I was told loooooonnnnngggg before that to look at colleges but I’m a procrastinator and don’t pay attention (and have that ADD problem) so I didn’t really listen.  Earlier in my senior school year, my guidance counselor had me go to a woman once a week and talk about what was going on with me and my college goals and such…and she kind of got me a bit motivated to start looking at colleges…but then she left mid-October and I just blew off college searches thereafter.  Come to think of it though, I really miss that woman.  I enjoyed talking to her so much…

Anyways, when Christmas vacation rolled around, something inside me snapped and said “Fuck, Sarah, most college application deadlines are the beginning of January! You HAVE to start looking at colleges NOW!” So, I listened to that part of me.  Honestly, that part of me only existed because I got my SAT scores back on Christmas Eve.  I started off by going to some website, and they have you list your major, and it shows you all the schools in your country that have a program for your major.  So, naturally, I ended up checking out schools with forensic science programs.  There were a lot of schools out there.  And I made it even more difficult on myself because I didn’t have any other specifications.  I didn’t care WHERE in the USA my school was, or how big the school was, or anything like that, so I was literally opening myself up to every possible college out there with a forensic science program.

I believe what I did next was copy and paste all the colleges from every state into Microsoft Word to get organized.  You know, you figure every state would have at least ONE school with a forensics program, but that’s not so.  Maine isn’t cool enough for it unfortunately…but that would have been my top-priority school.  Because I love Maine. And not just because the love of my life Stephen King lives there (although that IS a good point…) but the location and atmosphere is nice. Even if I hate snow I still love Maine. Don’t judge me.

So after I had all the colleges down on paper, I went through each school’s website and checked them out.  The first to go were all the schools associated with certain religions.  Mainly because, as you all may or may not know by now, I am not at all a fan of religion.  And I wanted absolutely no religion affiliation to any of the schools I was applying to.  And it did cut down a bit of the schools.

Then I went through and looked at the websites of the schools, looking at what kind of forensic programs the schools had.  Acutally, I think the next step was to see which schools just had Forensic Science as a graduate program/ Master’s degree and not a bachelor’s degree. Then I went through and looked at their websites.  This took a long time…and I started on Christmas Eve! Crazy…

Anyways, I looked and tried to delete all the schools from the list that had little or no information on the forensics major…or just looked a little sketchy.  All the rest of the schools I bookmarked.  Or at some point I bookmarked a lot of the schools and still haven’t gotten around to deleting all of them, so I’ll show ya just how comprehensive my college-school-choice list was..

I was very serious! And I really took all schools into consideration. Including one near the bottom simply listed as “CONSIDER SARAH!!”  If your eyes can’t read that, it’s not that important anyways, just thought I’d point it out.

…I honestly don’t know what the school is right now…

Anyways, I kept going through and comparing the colleges.  Location in the country didn’t matter to me.  Although, I had been dating Nathan for a little while and slightly did take his location into consideration.  But never choose a college solely because of a boy you’re dating. Unless you’re engaged to the guy…but even then.  You need to do what’s best for you!

I kept narrowing down the list based on the forensic programs on each of the colleges pages.  The more information they had on the program, the better.  I also looked at colleges with different FOCUSES in forensics.  Some had focuses in anthropology (which I kinda really want to do now..), chemistry, and biology.  But I tried to find schools that had other options besides bio and chem as the intended focus..

So…somehow I had it narrowed down to like 10 colleges. I only applied to like…5 of them:

• Weber State University  (In Utah)
• University of Nebraska-Lincoln 
• Wichita State University    (In Kansas)
• Trine University  (In Indiana)
• University of New Haven   (In Connecticut)
• Arkansas State? (I don’t really count this one in the mix because I decided I didn’t want to go there after they wanted all my shots records and stuff)

I officially had completed this by the 30th of December.  It took me a solid week to narrow down all the schools.

 

Part 3: The Chosen Ones: The Applications, and the Weakest Link(s)

So to end my Christmas Vacation, I started to fill out all the online applications to my schools.  Most of them had a small application fee…which I think is ridiculous. I mean you really want me to pay to just LOOK at my application and possibly reject it? Psh… I think the most I paid for that was like $35 which was okay.  And the good news was I only needed a recommendation for one of my schools (UNH).  So, after I had all the applications done, I was pretty much set to go.  At least I thought.

Then I realized some schools required SAT Scores…Soooo I went and submitted those scores to the schools that required it.

I also had to send my transcripts, which were easy enough.

Then all I had to do was wait to see which schools I’d get into.

Now, I’m not going to brag or anything but I’m a pretty smart girl and would get accepted into any school I’d apply to…and I did.

But, while I was waiting the few weeks between sending out my applications and getting replies, I had looked more into the colleges I wanted to go to.

I had decided that I didn’t really care about UNL and Wichita..and not even really Trine (until I got a shitload of stuff from them…but more into that later).  You see, you pick a few schools you THINK you might be interested in going to, but when push comes to shove, you want to go where you want to go.  And in this case, I decided that UNL and Wichita were my weakest links…and all the mail I got from them, I just was like ‘Whatever’ to.

 

Part 4:  The Indecision Of My Top 3 Schools…

When I had first applied for my schools, I was already extremely biased towards Weber State University.  Mainly because of Nathan.  I mean, not only was this school in the same proximity of him, but he GOES there.  I was so happy when it turned out that they had a good forensic science program.  And when I got accepted he was really happy for me too (I mean, he was supporting me no matter which college I decided I wanted to go to, but I could still tell he was biased and wanted me to go there).  So I had my heart somewhat set on that school from the beginning.

But then there was UNH.  I had looked at New Haven’s website and slowly but surely started to fall in love with the school…everything about it.  And it’s only 7 hours away from my house…whereas Weber is a good 35 at least.. That school seemed to have everything.  And when I got a $30,000 scholarship to attend, I had cried because I was so happy.  I had become convinced I was going to attend that school.

Finally, there’s Trine.  Trine was a little…weird for me at first.  They wanted a school picture of me for one thing, and went a little too over-killy on emails.  But other than that, they were pretty cool.  Oh, and the mail sent to my house was a lot. But I enjoyed getting mail.  They offered me a scholarship too. Which was good.  My dad wanted me to go there a good bit at one point because he thought they sounded best.

But I was pretty torn.  I didn’t really care about Trine, it was easy to forget about…but Weber versus New Haven... it was tough.

I took one last look at UNH’s website, and found out that their forensic programs dealt with chemistry versus biology. 

And then I looked at Weber’s, and even though their forensic’s major was more of a Criminal Justice degree with a concentration in forenscis, they had two tracks: one for labs, and one for the investigation part of forensics.  And I didn’t want to have to do labwork. So it was cool that they offer an investigation concentration.

That was what really had me.  I thought “New Haven has a forensics program that looks amazing, but I’d have to go for my Masters if I wanted to do fieldwork, and at Weber, I could get my investigative forensics degree in 4 years instead of 8”  Plus, if I didn’t like forensics, I could decide in less schooling, which would mean saving more money!

So when I finally told Nathan that I was going to Weber instead of UNH, he was extremely excited.  Like, really, really excited.  Like, you know how when dogs get excited they piddle on the floor? That’s how excited Nathan was.  He was really convinced I was going to New Haven, so when he found out I was coming to his school, he could barely contain himself.

And I was happy with myself, knowing that even though Nathan was certainly a perk for my college, I wanted to go there for the right reasons; not just a boyfriend, but my career goals as well.

 

Part 5: The Downside to Being An Incoming Freshman (And 1st-born)

My parents have gone through HELL with me when it comes to college.  I think a good part of that has to do with the fact that they’ve never had to deal with this before.  And even though I had Nathan to help me….let’s face it. He’s old and he hasn’t been a freshman in a long time, so he wasn’t really much help to me.  I kind of had to do everything on my own.

So I set up orientation, and that (hopefully) will be on the 19th of August.  This is right before classes start, which is good because we won’t have to waste money flying out to Utah and back.

The downside to this is registering for classes.  Normally at orientation they show you what you can take and all that, but because my orientation is so close to classes, I can’t wait until then to register for them.  And I don’t know who to talk to so I have to email the school late today and find out what I can do about all that.  I just sent the email actually to make sure I wouldn’t forget about it.

I also had to sign up for housing on my own and was late at doing that.  I wanted my own room but that didn’t happen and I’m going to end up having a roommate (if I can go next month)  I hope she’s cool.

I don’t really know what else there is I’m supposed to do, and I think I’m forgetting to tell you all something that should be included here… I don’t know.  If I think of it I’ll add it later on.

 

Part 6:  Financial Issues

…May I rant to you all for a few paragraphs?  I’ll make it up to you by including a funny gif following my rant (chances are you won’t even read the rant and skip right down to giggling at the gif, but it’s okay.)  Either way you’ll at least know when I’m done ranting.

-Takes a deep breath-

-Lets it out-

Okay! I’m done ranting!

..Just kidding! Did you really think it’d be that easy? Hahhhhh I wish.

Okay, so let me just ask you guys this…I’m smart, right? Well, maybe you guys don’t really know this.  Or wouldn’t believe that I have any sort of intelligence considering how spastic and ADD I am in my blogs.  So that was a dumb question to ask.

Okay, here’s a good question…shouldn’t everyone be able to go to college?

I hope your answers are yes, otherwise, I kind of want to know the reasoning behind it.

Anyways, look at it this way.  All my life I’ve been considered ‘gifted’.  My parents have always seen me as smart and it’s always just been a given that I would attend college after I graduated high school.  And that’s what I always thought.  I figured I was smart enough that I could easily go to college. 

But as it turns out, that’s not all that goes on when it comes to college. 

They make you fill out a FAFSA form to see if you qualify for any financial aid.  And if your family makes too much money, you’re looking at paying thousands of dollars out of pocket to get an education.

And it just so happens that this was the situation I came across.  And the problem with these financial aid institutions is that they are based on GROSS income and not NET.  They see how much a person makes a year, but don’t see the mortgages or car payments or bills or anything of that nature that a family needs to pay each month. 

Just because my family makes a certain amount, I don’t qualify for much money.  And that just isn’t fair.  If I can’t get loans, I can’t attend college. Even though I have known all my life I was going to go to college…and it isn’t fair.  I should be able to go to college despite everything.  I should be able to get financial help when I request it.  I shouldn’t have to stay at home and work for a fucking year after I’m done high school until I can qualify for a fucking loan myself. It just isn’t fair! Goddammit it pisses me off that I can’t attend college just because of money! It’s ridiculous! I am the one who wants to attend a college and they should be more willing to help me and not just say “maybe you should rethink going to college if you can’t come up with the money to pay for it”.  I shouldn’t have to listen to that shit.  I should be able to say “hey! I want to come to your college. Is there anything I can do financially to attend?” And the college should be able to say “Sure! Look at loans for this bank and this organization to help you!” But fuck! It’s like they don’t give a damn whether you go or not.

I’m sorry it just really pisses me off. Because it’s what I want more than anything. I just want to be able to go to college…

Okay. Here are the gifs I promised you (=

 

 

 

Okay so when it comes to college, you have a cost of attendance and financial assistance.  My cost of attendance per year is about $26,000.  IN financial assistance I have gotten about $15,000 a year.  Which is good, but I still have to pay $11,000 a year out of pocket myself, and my family can’t handle that.  My parents tell me not to say stuff like that out on the web but it’s true.  As much as I SHOULD be going to college, it might not be possible for me simply because my parents make too much.  Even though we don’t have any money hardly left after all the payments we have to make..

Me and my dad applied for a loan 2 weeks ago and are still waiting to hear back. And guys, it scares the shit out of me.  Knowing that the difference between a yes and a no is the difference between me going to college now, or possibly never going.

If I can’t get this loan, my dad already told me to start looking for a job.  And I don’t want to have to do that. I just want to go off to college and live my happy little life.  I don’t think it’s too much to ask.

 

So there you have it. My college experience.  Even though I’m not in college yet…we’ll call it my PRE-college experience. I’m trying to be optimistic, but it’s hard.  It’s really, really hard. Especially when you’re a huge pessimist like I am.

I really hope I get this loan you guys.  Or possibly this whole blog was written in vain.

So let’s not let that happen, okay?

Update:  Look, I’m not looking to seem ‘smug’ about being gifted or anything, but I think it should be a factor when looking at colleges and such. I’m not looking for a pity party. I’m not looking for anything really. I just thought I should be able to get my feelings out on paper. And I’m not complaining about how much money I got; I think it’s fantastic. But unlike MOST high schoolers and college student who are actually able to get loans to pay for fucking college, chances are I won’t be able to do the same. Which means despite the financial aid I AM getting, I STILL won’t be able to go. I’m not afraid of paying off my fucking loans for the rest of my life. I just want to be able to GET a fucking loan.  Just thought I’d straighten that part out.  ‘Kay?