Students resort to private loans

[buckthesystem]

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?...MNGKKLVHCK1.DTL

[LadyRaven]

I wanted to be a stay at home mom, my parents had raise us with the assumption we'd go to college, it was expected. I was an artistic type and wanted to take an art major. No go, they wouldn't pay for it. Nor would they pay for a history degree or a literature or philosophy degree (the other major things which interested me). These were somehow not marketable. So I went to school to be an ECE major so that when I got married, I could run a daycare out of my house or maybe in a building adjoining my property, so I could be with my kids. I thought it the best and most practical decision I could make. My parents thought I would make a good teacher and realised that high school level might not be suited to me (I should have taken history or lit with an ed minor)

My parents paid for part of my college and I got a gsl and grants for the rest, however I never finished. Part of that is due to my not wanting to do what I was going to school for, I realised I didn't have the talent. They put me in a class with all those heathens and I fell apart. I like little kids of my own, and others I only like in small doses. The other part is that since I wasn't paying for it I was going full time and thus unable to switch majors when I realised I wasn't really meant to do what i was studying, I took a year off to "figure things out" and "earn money" to go back and the loan kicked in and I couldn't go back because I couldn't save any money due to the loan.

I am a scanner and will probably never have a life long career anyway, but if I'd worked my way through like my sister did, chances are I'd have found something I could have tolerated for a long period of time to at least get a two year degree in...and I wouldn't have been as concerned about getting "marketable" careers because I wouldn't have had a debt right off getting out of school. I could have taken history, literature, art, whatever I wanted. Maybe all three, or barring that maybe something "good enough" not to cause me to pull my hair out and get sick at the idea of going to work. Then It would be something to "come back to" or "fall back on" between my periods of freelance work and changes of employment. I don't have that so when I'm not in the process of building up a new skill, I'm slinging burgers, flipping pizza or cleaning up someone else's mess. Which is honest work and I'm thankful I have that, but it still would be easier to actually have a marketable skill that I didn't hate for times like this.

My sister...they couldn't afford to pay for and she knew it. She originally went into the military to get in on the GI bill but got pregnant and had to get out (she was way too sick). So, she worked and took courses at home over many many years. Now she is happily doing what she went to school to do, and she has no bills because she paid as she was going. She is like me in that she has to change "scenery" every so often, but she can move around in a company or just change companies and still practice her skill. Now she's studying something else...

Frankly I think she had a better outcome. I don't believe anyone should go into debt to go to college or that anyone should have it all paid for them, EVERYONE should work their way through. We'd have much less college delinquency because people would take it seriously, and people would get degrees in something, at least one of the things, that they actually liked and were actually talented to do. We'd have people who would willingly work at the jobs that "noone else will do" because they're working their way through college and people would stop thinking that society owes them something. Colleges would have to lower tuition to accomodate the fact that students were not going to pay fifty thousand dollars a year to go part time without any regard to the debt ahead, and kids would get real about their lives either in or immediately after high school instead of their last year of college.