Essay On Attending College

Deciding to attend college was basically a no brainer for me back when I was in high school. I had a passion to further my education, which would give me the skills to eventually enter the medical field, in which I have high desires to achieve. Receiving a higher education is a necessity to entering the medical field. The fact is, however, even though this was an easy decision for me, it now became a matter of how I would provide the means to fund it. College is an investment, both financially and for your future. From a financial standpoint, the medical field is very well paid, but requires education beyond a bachelor’s degree in most cases, which makes the whole process an even bigger investment. When you make it to the point of preparing for graduate school, you have to take on even bigger loans because a lot of the aid that you received on a need basis is no longer supplied. Growing up in a middle class family, we didn’t have the funds at our disposal to pay for college out of pocket. The first step in funding this decision was to apply to FAFSA in order to obtain financial aid so that college can be as affordable as possible. Even after I received my financial aid award from FAFSA, it only covered about half of my tuition. Seeing that there was still a substantial amount of funding needed to cover aspects beyond the tuition alone, the next step I took was applying for a private loan. Since I made the decision of living on campus I had to face the extra cost of room and board. These combining costs made a private loan a necessity and one of the opportunity costs of attending college. I saw that the opportunity to attend college outweighed the amount of debt that was going to be placed upon me. Also, even if my future plans after college end up changing, having a degree makes me a much more competitive applicant in the job market. Unlike our parents’ generations, it is very hard to find a well-paying job without a college degree. A college degree is becoming the new standard for companies looking to hire. My middle class family struggled immensely to get where they are today. In fact my father was a first generation immigrant here from Italy. The only English he spoke was the little that his older brother was able to teach him while growing up. He chose to come to America for a better life and to find better work. He met my mother while working for a cemetery and they clicked immediately. My dad describes their meeting as “love at first sight”. Before they knew it they got married and had two children. With the bills of the family building up, my mother had to take on another job working as an EMT. I believe this is where I got my passion for the medical field, from my mother. While my mother worked two jobs, my father worked long days and nights laboring at the cemetery to provide for his family. We never lived a lavish lifestyle but they gave us everything they could which is all I could ask for. I remember him coming home very late when I was just a toddler and collapsing on our living room couch from exhaustion, still in his work uniform. By the next morning when I woke up he would be gone for work already. My brother is currently pursuing his dream job of becoming a nurse at Ohio University, so with two children in college, my parents still work day in and day …show more content…
I learned that most importantly of all, there will be opportunity costs in almost anything that is worth while. Making sacrifices now is the basis for the foundation for achieving long-term success in the professional world. I also learned that while making any major financial decisions, you have to consider all aspects of the deal, such as the current state of the market and other variables such the influence of supply and demand on the price you are paying. In the future, I can definitely vision myself in constant reflection on the basis principles of this class, as they can be readily shaped to fit and help solve a multitude of problems that may be encountered in the journey through