At this time of year I’m fielding a lot of “where is my scholarship check” emails and texts from very nervous students who are burned out on the nuttery that is figuring out how to pay for college. I always end my replies with “good luck at school” because you never know whether there’s an adult in their corner, or if it’s all “college is a waste of time” or “you’ll never be good enough no matter how high your grades are.”
One scholarship program requires me to review allowable expenses, and last week I had a real Proust’s madeleines moment opening a student’s document that had clearly spent some time on the floor of their car. That simultaneous thrill at being independent, on the cusp of something new, the dread you’re not going to get it right, the fear that you’re going to run out of money, that you’re not going to be able to hold it all together.
When I applied to my MPH program, I had to order my college transcripts, the first time I’d seen them in over 20 years. Semester by semester I traced the classes I inadvisedly skipped because I wanted to shoehorn in another hour of work, or because it meant I’d be more likely to make a tight bus transfer and not be late to one of my jobs. I stared at one semester and kept getting an inexplicable cold sweat until I remembered that was when I was constantly harangued by a creep at a poorly lit bus shelter at night (a problem I solved only by moving). I remembered, not fondly, meals of those neon orange cheese and peanut butter crackers (protein) and Payday bars (protein, even though they are frankly the saddest candy bar) out of the vending machine, of scheduling everything down to the minute so I wouldn’t miss a bus, sleeping in my work clothes, smelling like hummus.
So a bit of background: I went to an Expensive Liberal Arts College for my freshman year and then transferred to Cleveland State, which I’d previously scorned as “not a real school” where all the “idiots” were going to end up. My freshman year was paid for with savings bonds that my dad, a civil servant, and my grandfather, who worked for General Motors, were able to squirrel away for me. I had no idea how I was going to pay for the remaining three years and luckily I didn’t have to because it turned out I hated it there. Transferring to Cleveland State was the best decision I’ve ever made; in a lifetime of regrettable decisions, I’ve never regretted that one. My experience with Cleveland State made me who I am.
Cleveland State was almost entirely a commuter school at the time, but I did not live with my parents, though technically I could have. I really needed to be out of their house and on my own; I recognize this now as essential to my mental health and honestly, probably the mental health of my mother, who finally got some solitude for the first time in 30 years. So I worked. A lot. I worked at a branch of the Cuyahoga County Public Library and I worked at Nature’s Bin, a hippie food store slash training facility for developmentally disabled people that was just starting to experience the identity crisis that emerged when rich people cottoned on to soy milk. I didn’t drive until I was 23, so I took RTA everywhere. The choices of where I could live and work were entirely dependent on bus routes not getting cut, which they often did, and my class schedules and work schedules were likewise dependent on RTA not making schedule changes mid-semester, which it often did.
In the end, working to support myself through college got me great life experience but a sort of half-assed, forgettable education. At one point I considered taking a year or two off just to work and buy myself time to think about what I wanted to do, like just go to the library and get a book of career options and look through it at my own pace without being exhausted. I made the mistake of confessing this to my dad and since he is an Olympic-level catastrophizer he pictured me never going back to college and talked me out of it. My boyfriend had gone straight from high school into the workforce and was working towards ASE master tech certification, and I didn’t realize it until much later, like I’m talking weeks ago, but I was really jealous of him entering adulthood doing this thing he loved and was good at and that’s undoubtedly part of why I torpedoed our relationship. I really liked working at Nature’s Bin, I had a lot of hippie food knowledge, I liked talking to customers, and I was a pretty good baker, and that didn’t really feel like a dead end to me; I kind of just wanted what he had: a job that made me feel competent at something where I could actually grow some skills for awhile and plan my next move.
All that said, I loved Cleveland State! I loved getting that half-assed forgettable education because at the time a BA did grant you access and so why not get a BA at Aldi brand prices. I’ve joked about raiding the couch cushions to pay my tuition, but like, it’s not far off — one semester I won a university-sponsored writing contest that knocked so much off my tuition I just went to the bursar’s office and paid cash. The entire three years after I transferred cost as much as one semester at Expensive Liberal Arts College. I never had any student loan debt. This sort of education is just not possible now.
I debated expanding this into a separate issue, but here’s another gift Cleveland State gave me: a student body who taught me a great deal about the world we live in. There were at least two classmates who’d been shot; one was a gang shooting and one was an ex-police officer who’d been shot in the face and was going back to get a degree in social work. There was a black Muslim woman, a single mom in an on-off abusive relationship, who was struggling with the decision to veil. There were many (gasp!) people in their 30s, 40s, 50s, many students with children, women who’d had difficult pregnancies, Golden Buckeye ladies who were there because over 65 you got to audit state school classes for free. This exposed me to all kinds of perspectives I needed to understand America at the turn of the 21st century. These classmates taught me that there were a great many people whose lives were much harder than mine, who had entirely different challenges; that we all had to live together in this weird American Experiment and to do that well, we had to make a society that took all this stuff into account. In contrast, what I learned at Expensive Liberal Arts College was there was a class system and I’d never be in the right branch of it. (I’d grown up thinking we were rich because my parents were married and my mom bought name brand Pop Tarts.)
Is there a moral to this story? There wasn’t going to be, but this very morning I responded to a stressed out mom in an online college parents group whose daughter was starting 12th grade after a tumultuous few years that involved job loss and serious illness. What should she do? Go to college right away, work? Twenty-five years ago, you could get by on the half-assed forgettable education I allotted myself by pushing through exhaustion. You probably can’t do that now, and working for a few years can’t hurt, can get you good experience and more importantly a fair bit more money than it could back then. Then, when you do go to college, you’re helping provide life perspective to other classmates, and learning about other people is essential to keeping democracy alive. Plus — and this is a big one — you’re giving yourself space to breathe, think, plan your next move, and that can have enormous positive upstream effects.
Tl;dr YMWV with college, your parents’ college experience is not your own, and maybe we should think harder about what we’re actually trying to learn between ages 18 and 22 (life skills? how to get along with other people in an evolving society? how to apply themes from Canterbury Tales to workplace conflict?) I don’t know. I don’t know how else to end this, so I’ll leave you with the wise words of my favorite modern-day philosopher:
Good luck at school, kids.
—CB