Finish my B.A.

This is the end of my second week of my second year back in school and I am excited and terrified. Because it had been so long since I was in college previously (14 years), I basically started all over last year. I am currently attending community college, but I am going to transfer to university next year and I only found out during Spring Quarter of last year that I must re-take the SAT (scores are only good for 5 years). I did really well on the SAT before, but that was before they changed it and added the essay…It’s not so much that I am afraid that I won’t do well on the test; I just dread having to sit through such a long test – it’s 45 minutes longer now than when I originally took it and it was already 3 hours long back then! I also resent having to get up so early on a Saturday morning to take it, but I’ll just stop whining (I must admit that I am curious to know how my new scores will compare with my old scores) and get back to studying.

I’m actually closer to midterms than I am to the end of the school year, but it’s amazing how quickly the end of the quarter comes after midterms.  I have been so busy being back in school full-time that I rarely have time to be online for fun (like updating 43 Things), but I am taking a small break to drink a glass of wine before writing a paper for my Comp class.  All things considered, I am doing really well – I made the Dean’s List for Fall Quarter and missed it by only 0.15 last quarter, but I still received an invitation to join Phi Theta Kappa (which is an international honor society, not a Greek sorority/fraternity organization).

I think it’s tragic that in the U.S., one has to be either very rich or very, very poor to afford a college education. I skipped my senior year of high school and went to USC when I was 16, but they screwed up my financial aid (they conveniently admitted this to me a year after the fact and told me that they couldn’t fix it; new year=new budget) and I have not managed to return to college (other than a community college class here and there) since then – I’m 30. Turning 30 has inspired me to do whatever I must (short of anything illegal or lewd) – like quitting a high stress job last month – to complete my degree, but I still don’t know if I will be able to pull it off financially. Even if/when I do, I will no doubt be drowning in student loan debt, like far too many others…