I have now attended 3 separate universities in the last 16 years. Yes, sixteen years is how long I have been pursuing a degree and in this pursuit I have encountered a vast sum of pressures.
In the beginning was the pressure to just dip my feet in the proverbial college water to see if it was something I dared to pursuit. Was it something I could handle? If my high school grades were any reflection on how I could perform in college, I was going to be in trouble.
To fix this pressure, I took only classes that I knew would be fairly simple and easy to pass with a perfect A as my grade. I never sat down with any counselor or advisor to help me figure things out. I assume they assumed I was old enough to know what I was doing and knew what I was after. I did not.
After a while, classmates would ask why I was not taking English or Math or any of the core classes. Heck, I did not know that there was some certain order these things were to be taken in, and the word "core", to me, that was the center of an apple, not some set schedule a person was to follow.
Then the pressure was to start these "core" classes and get my path going on towards something I could get a degree in. After that was the pressure to decide what that path was going to be. What was I interested in enough to pay thousands of dollars to learn even more about, and then use once I learned it?
I suffered a lay off and two pregnancies, that put pressure to have to pay for school on a very limited income. All I can say is THANK GOD for Pell Grants! To this day I remain debt free only because of the governments help.
The pressure I am facing today is my family asking when will I be done with all these classes. They do not like all the time I am spending away from them, and now that I have four grand babies, my time is even more precious to divide between all of them.
I think I will be one of the only persons who will have earned a 4 year degree in the short time of twenty years!
Gale R.
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