Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Financial Aid (?)

This always happens. It happened last year, and now it's happening again. Most people would look at me and say, "Well, you've already got three years of college under your belt, you've only got one more!" But it's not like I have just one more. I have two more. Maybe five semesters. So it's so frustrating when I don't get the financial aid that I need. I'm in Flushing this summer. I'm doing mission work, and I'm not working at a job that will make me money so that I can go to school.
How the heck am I supposed to get $3,600 for next year if I'm working a negative job. It's not like I'll get paid the extra money people gave me for my trip if I don't spend it. And I'm also not really qualified to do anything besides work at a summer camp or a daycare or teach piano lessons. And if I don't get paid to do any of those things, then is school even going to happen this year?
We all talk about how college is shaping and the friends are wonderful. I agree. Friends are wonderful, and they challenge me and make me better, but if I can't provide for myself, then there's really nothing that I can  feel but stressed about money and worried that these things won't happen.
I want to be able to provide for myself, and live sustainably. I would like to get a job and play gigs, in all honesty. I would rather play music than be at school. And I know that getting a degree is great, because then it's something to fall back on. But aren't internships better? Isn't one-to-one learning how they did it before they wrote the textbooks? Aren't all the ideas that people come up with from observation anyway? Not just something that they learned in a book?
All these things become fire in my belly, and I wish that the right person would hear it and fund my freaking education. The hardest part for me is that I don't even know if Social work is something I should do. It's a great idea, and I love the thought of being able to solve someone's problems and helping uncorupt the system, but the reason that I haven't declared anything is because I'm still uncertain. Last semester I went from one idea to another for days and days and weeks and weeks because I couldn't make up my mind, that I cannot define that the one thing that I'm meant to do is go to school. What if going to school isn't what I'm supposed to do? I mean it could be, but ever since I've had a break from the classroom, I'm much more driven to drive--and to be. So maybe school isn't it for me right now. I wish that I could say that after all this time I'm ok with going back to school and becoming a great amazing Social worker, but I like doing those things for fun. I like it when you get paid for fun, but when I can be my own person. I feel like training strains and pushes into a cookie cutter. I hate that all the people I look up to went to college, and I can't make up my mind or suck it up and just finish the four years.
There are so many reasons that I went to Akron in high school--and one of those reasons was to avoid some of the pains of debt and such. It doesn't help that I paid for it last year and I still feel like I'm starting all over again. Ugh Ugh. I pray that everything works out, and that I can make it through school.

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