Friday, June 13, 2008

School Days, School Days

Posted by Laura / 2 comments » / , life, school, the future, work

After stopping classes last year so that I could work full time in order to save up for my move, I am now pursuing school once again. This job will be a good one for it as it has a fairly steady schedule, even though it’s during the time that most on-campus classes would be.

Every time I go through the process of getting “into” a school, I’m reminded by just how much it sucks. There is no more eloquent way to articulate it: it sucks. First, there’s filling out the FAFSA, which is an adventure all on its own. Mine took me several disjointed times to finally get it all filled out, and even still, I have to wait for my mom to get back from her latest cruise before I can do anything further with it.

FAFSA, actually, is entirely silly. If I were to wait until the spring term, I would be able to file on my own, without needing any parental information. The reason being that I would be nearing 24, and would also be married. Somehow, these things make a huge difference in my independence, despite the fact that my parents will not be able to claim me as a dependent this year and indeed will not be sponsoring, cosigning or otherwise helping me out with my loans in any way. It’s a silly kind of rule, but in order for me to start school in the fall rather than waiting until the spring, I still need information from my mom. I was able to get the appropriate information, and now all I need is an electronic signature, which will just have to wait. It’s nice to know that’s done, though.

The next item on the list of Things To Do is to figure out which community college I’ll attend. We’re in the county for one of them, but it has a difficult website to navigate and I found it very frustrating. I also could find almost no online classes, which is a big problem for me, since I won’t be able to attend on campus unless it’s a once-a-week class. The other is out of county for me, but has ample online classes, including language classes. I know there will be times that I’ll have to go to the campus, for exams and such (at least that’s how it worked for the classes I took online in Oregon), but if there’s a window that includes Wednesday or Thursday (which my days off seem to alternate between), then I’ll be able to get down and take an exam at the college and still be able to work full time like I’m doing.

I’m excited for the prospect of getting back to school, especially now that I have a better idea of what I’d like to do “when I grow up.” I’m getting six or seven architecture books from someone who is studying architecture so I’ll see if maybe architecture would be a good career path for me. I’d like to take some culinary courses to see if perhaps a career in food is for me. Whether I study architecture, music or food, though, I’m bound to find some class or another that will be relevant to my ultimate pursuance of said career.

I guess, to put it bluntly, I’m going back to school, and darn it, I’m excited about it!

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