Price Hike, Loans, and Money Problems

Dinner was depressing, even though it only lasted 10 minutes.

I learned that apparently Watkins raised their tuition cost yet again! The new cost is $490 per credit hour. When I got the book with the schedule, they said the price was only $420 per hour for the fall. Now that the summer semester is nearly over, the price went up apparently. I'll be taking a full load of 12 credit hours this fall. You do the math.

My mother wonders if we even qualify for financial aid since my sister is going off to college out of state. Last we heard, we didn't qualify for anything. Neither me or my sister, who is scholastically better than me on all fronts, will be getting tax dollars to help make ourselves smarter. As such, mom is thinking about going the loan route.

Right now, I'm seriously considering dropping out. My registration date isn't until July 14, so I have time to mull it over. However, given the financial situation as well as the obvious fact as to who the better one of us between myself and my sister as far as higher education goes, I might as well drop out of college.

My parents and everyone always tells me that certain sacrifices have to be made in life like doing things you don't want to. They love to use that line when I bitch about how I don't want to find a job because whatever reason I can think of at the time. My logic right now is that I might as well sacrifice my higher learning in exchange for my sister. One less kid to worry about graduating a second time.

Besides, my goal is to be an artist, one of the poorest paid professions this side of the Great Depression. My sister wants to teach English now on the high school level. With all these cuts being made to the arts and music in schools nation wide, I can't help but feel like I am unimportant in the bigger picture. At least she has job security. I won't have anything short of a fancy license plate that says I'm a resident artist and get government money because I'm poor but yet "important" to those that can't read... or so I'm told.

Terry was right. He told me in advising that he's seen it before. Kids first lower the number of hours they take and then slowly drop out for one reason or another. I guess he's seen it so many times that he knew I was the it child this year or something.

All of a sudden, my education doesn't seem all that important anymore. Then again, a lot of things have been starting to lose their priority status.

We'll see what I do come July 14 if I drop out or not.