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 Post subject: "Oh fuck. I'm screwed." Help untwisting this, please...
PostPosted: Thu Oct 23, 2008 6:04 pm 
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I am about to graduate from college with an Associates Degree. I'm enrolling in a Bachelor's program.

Or so I thought. Because my on my FAFSA? My EFC was almost 9000.

There's no way. There's no fucking way. It doesn't take existing debt or living costs into account. It doesn't take MEDICAL expenses into account.

I'm already fully expecting that I'll need to make due with an Associates. No one wants to hire someone with an Associates. They want a Bachelors. I can't get a Bachelor's. I can't afford it. I couldn't really afford the Associates, and now I'm stuck with a useless degree and $20k more in debt than I started with. I feel like I've just been ruined.

Is someone out there to help me untwist this?

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 Post subject: Re: "Oh fuck. I'm screwed." Help untwisting this, please...
PostPosted: Thu Oct 23, 2008 6:41 pm 
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Josh, I'm 37 years old and I still don't have my Bachelor's degree. I got some office experience while in high school, continued that through my attempt at community college thereafter. The more office experience I got, the more qualifications I had in the non-education side of things. I am currently a Junior at the University of Colorado - 21 years after graduating high school - and it's all free because I got my foot in the door at a company offering tuition assistance. The first five years, they gave $3,750 per calendar year and now they're giving $5,250 per calendar year. I recognize that my employer's tuition assistance policy is fairly generous but even at half those amounts, you could totally be done with your bachelor's degree in well under the 23 years it's going to take me! (Expected graduation is Spring 2011, btw - but it's all been free for the last 50 or so credit hours and will continue to be free.)

You'll have your associate's degree. You have office experience, I believe. You should definitely be employable at other companies that DO offer tuition assistance.

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3. Mental Filter - You pick out a single negative detail and dwell on it exclusively, so that your vision of reality becomes darkened, like the drop of ink that discolors a beaker of water.

6. Magnification - You exaggerate the importance of your problems and shortcomings, or you minimize the importance of your desirable qualities.

8. "Should" statements - You tell yourself that things should be the way you hoped or expected them to be.

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 Post subject: Re: "Oh fuck. I'm screwed." Help untwisting this, please...
PostPosted: Thu Oct 23, 2008 9:05 pm 
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I dropped out of college my first time with the equivalent of a Associate Degree so it enabled me to teach preschool while my daughter was an infant through preschool age. It worked out best for me because I wanted to be near her and yet I needed a paycheck to take care of her. Then I went back to school to get my BA in Education as I had started out to do in the first place, fresh out of high school. I graduated from college 10 years after I graduated from high school but at least I got there. It took scholarships, grants, student employment and loans to finish school but I was able to make it work. Then I went to work teaching in an impoverished school district where salaries are not as high but it erased my loans completely so that I did not have to pay them. Now that I have my BA, I am working from home selling books online - something I could have done fresh out of high school when I was working two jobs to pay my college tuition, books, and living expenses.

My eventual goal is to get my MA in Psychology so I can work as a school counselor or a school psychologist but that dream is on hold right now because I don't have the money or the time to go back to school. It could happen someday or the world could end before then but I am making the most with what I have now because that is where I am currently at in my life. I have to realize that I can only do so much and right now raising my daughters is the most important thing in my life.

Have you tried looking into your options for employment with an Associate degree? Certainly you have more options than you would with just a high school diploma. You may have to live on a tight budget but you should be able to find something to make ends meet. I don't know what your program of study has been but there are programs like the Peace Corps where you can get additional training while they pay you to perform a job at a lower wage. It is somewhat like going into the military for the education benefits without being owned or shipped off to a war zone. It doesn't hurt to look into your options, even if it works out for you to get your BA as planned.

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