This is going to be a long story. I wish I found this website before I entered any colleges.
Before we begin, I have zero debt. However I have a lot more to lose than money, and I don’t have much money either.
There are definitely questions for me to ask, but I may as well share my story…
Here I am about to graduate. I walk the stage but something is amiss. Did I pick the right major? Right classes? Right College? While every adviser and my family seemed cheery enough that I graduated Summa Cum Laude of chemistry with full scholarship, everything was absolutely wrong to me.
I went to my dean to speak about my troubles. I always found it odd the science department dean is separate for the one which handles everyone else. So I decide to ask him about career prospects. He recommends to enroll in a PhD or Forensics program. It all sounds logical for a science major but then I felt unconfident about what I learned. I have a major which felt challenging enough, and a concentration that… was larger than the minor?
That’s when he drops the bomb on me. Both of those programs are soft. He tells me he’s already in hot water with the president of the college.
Shocked by this information I kept googling tons of information about majors, forums, unemployment statistics, and college rankings. That’s when the pattern appeared: Public, Private, and For Profit.
All the signs rang as I found them in searches. Heavily exaggerated student employment stats, propaganda that focuses on anomalies in their student population… if these people are even real. Advisers that now, seem hardly concerned with how their students fair professionally. Students left crying in their final semester with the agony that they never got accepted into a Research Experience for Undergraduates program. Classes injected into majors from other disciplines in a disturbing way, as if trying to bolster a failing department somewhere else.
You may think, I should have seen this coming. I had other choices. I was accepted into the city honors program but the grit of the public schools seemed to phase me. My family seemed to want the best haven for me. I was simply a naive 18 year old, and they…
Well, one lost a whole bachelors degree over a single credit, another earned in 2 bad associates degrees. One majored in marketing to work in a physical labor job. Another person didn’t really start their life until 35, to get fired and restart at age 50. Living in a neighborhood where music plays with such deep bass the sound is never heard, simply felt by every car on the block, which then explode into noise and release their sirens. I’m definitely an insomniac, this whole experience for 6 years has made me stop eating, sleeping, exercising. I’m just a very sickly skeleton now.
And for what? A chemistry program that needs a reinforcement of class by a whopping 20-25 class units. At this point I’m disenchanted of even pursuing a career in this subject.
Now for the question… do I TRANSFER or not? There’s a twist.
Yes, a transfer from a technically graduated, sickly senior. Why consider this? That scholarship was actually in a sense, legit. FAFSA was untouched. If I’m not mistaken, don’t those last for 6 years?
A shimmer in the darkness. I can transfer to a community college, and if my estimates are correct I could comfortably earn a solid degree in 4 years, possibly only spending anywhere from 8k to nearly zilch. Of course I’m worried about losing my fantastic GPA, tons of college credits, a quarter of my life but I love my family that much to save them that money, which I would never request. I’d just have to get a job in this awful economy to pay for my next college span.
So… should I TRANSFER? What losses would I incur? How to I explain to employers that I have earned a total of over 200 credit hours during 10 years holding only one bachelor degree? I don’t know my destination college well except for a ton of bad reviews, harsh discrimination against second degree seekers and a definitely dangerous neighborhood.
Of course I’ve been completely shaken by these thoughts to completely stop eating and sleeping for weeks. But the neighborhood noise is also killing me.
Meanwhile I’ve said all of this and more to my family.
“Drop out of college, school is stupid.”
“You’ve spent too much time in school, get a job.”
“Stop being so depressed, you can get a job anywhere. You have what nobody else has: a bachelors degree.”
“I wasted 20 years of my life in the streets and I didn’t complain. You’re still a kid.”
“I’ll help you find a job in no time.”
I feel as if it would require a gauntlet of years, labor, money, and stress regardless of what I do. I’ve been contemplating suicide or just giving up. Suicide hotlines just hang up all the time, doctors telling me about how they regret their own lives, telling me how many college majors get shot down in today’s market when they’re actually my therapist. My family is angry of couse that my therapist is actually making me feel worse and arguing with them, but I know why. It’s because he and I and all of you now know. I’m not the crazy one, but the entire world around me is madness.
I just need help. A rendition of “I have no mouth yet I must scream.” I try to tell anyone and they just interrupt and tell me to shut up and stop panicking, ignoring all my quantitative and qualitative investigation of my issue. Literally nobody else understands the problem but me, because nobody wants to understand. The school guidance counselor is useless. The career center surprisingly helpful if only subtly hinting things in the college aren’t well. I just have to scream to anyone who will listen. Please write back.