My Journey Through College

I know many people believe college is a waste of time and money and for some that is true. However, I don’t believe that this is always the case. Like any experience in life, it comes down to how you make of it. I want to tell you my experience that I’ve had so far in college and why it’s taken me almost seven years to finish.

The Start

It all started at the end of my high school year. I graduated high school but I had no clue what I wanted to do. Honestly, I was overwhelmed by a number of choices I had to pick from. This is normal for any high school students. For years most of us are living with our parents and not really worrying too much about our future sadly. Now high school is done and I’m thrown 23482349 choices at my face and now I must choose one. I wish I took more time in deciding what college and major I wanted to do. Here’s the thing I went to an art high school and while I loved drawing I quickly noticed that having a career as an artist wasn’t what I wanted to do. The industry itself is very unstable which is not something I wanted. So, I decided to go to Mercy College and to major in Business. I was extremely excited to get into college and start my journey into adulthood.

Downhill

So fast forward and it’s my first day of college and I’m sitting in class taking notes. Everything is going well for the first couple of weeks then my whole life changed when I went to check my mailbox one day. Inside I found a letter from New York State telling me that I need to work to maintain the food stamps that my dad receives. Now I won’t get too much into it but at the time I needed food stamps to survive. So, put yourself in my shoes for a moment. You’re a full-time college student with very little time to work due to the huge amount of homework I get and the amount of studying that I need to do. Then suddenly you get a letter stating that you must find some type of work if not your main source of buying food is going to be taken away and you’re given a short amount of time of doing so. In fact, you only have two weeks to do the entire process. This one letter alone changed my whole life both for good and bad.

The Big Change

So, what do I do now? Quickly I go to explain my situation that I am a college student and I don’t have much time to work due to school. Sadly, this fell on deaf ears. A week passes with no hope and I start to get anxious about the whole situation. I decided that maybe my college can help me with this issue. So, I go and explain to them my whole situation and finally, I start to see the light at the end of the tunnel. I’m told that if I do work study that this will help the whole situation. Excited I quickly asked how can this happen and then I’m told some sad news. The deadline for work study has passed. This completely crushes my soul and I head home depressed. The next day I come back and I’m told that I was given an interview to work at the library within the college. Luckily, I was given a favor. Now I quickly must get ready for an interview that determined my next three years.