Video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHKtCOjZBio
It is crazy to think about how a few events can change your life and academic career. Not such as much of a physical change but also a mental change, or eye opener. I was born into the small town of Ludlow Pennsylvania with a population of under 300. I lived in the typical middle class family very happy in my days growing up as a child with my 2 brothers. I never asked for much and was given the world. It seemed like we had no problem growing up the family was stable throughout my childhood. As the years went by I understood at a young age that life wasn’t as easy as I thought as a child. I would start to sense the struggle my father and mother started to go through in my early teens and try to understand why it was hard to keep everything afloat when both my parents were making money.
It is crazy to think about how a few events can change your life and academic career. Not such as much of a physical change but also a mental change, or eye opener. I was born into the small town of Ludlow Pennsylvania with a population of under 300. I lived in the typical middle class family very happy in my days growing up as a child with my 2 brothers. I never asked for much and was given the world. It seemed like we had no problem growing up the family was stable throughout my childhood. As the years went by I understood at a young age that life wasn’t as easy as I thought as a child. I would start to sense the struggle my father and mother started to go through in my early teens and try to understand why it was hard to keep everything afloat when both my parents were making money.
One day reality entered my life when my parents split up and my mother and my two brothers had to move out to the town of Kane which was 9 miles from Ludlow. It wasn’t hard making the adjustment at first it was just going to the same school as before just living at a different place. But as a few months went by my mother was unable to make payments by herself. At that point my father wouldn’t help much financially because he was unable to work at the time; so my mother was stuck making all the payments off her own salary. As my high school years went by every month seemed like a struggle and I knew I would have to work right out of high school to help support my family because college was out of the question at that point.
Then I set my sights on football because I saw that as my ticket to college for free if I were to get any kind of scholarship. I worked hard to reach that goal but it wasn’t good enough. I waited until the end of my senior year and still no offers were available to me. So when I graduated I set my sights on a job because I couldn’t leave my family behind when I still had a younger brother going through school and my mother struggling to keep the family upright. I found a part time job which paid minimum wage I worked about 7 hours a day 5 days a week and my older brother found a job as well. At that point the family was pretty stable we got by rather well.
After 2 years of working I finally set my eyes to a college education. When I began college my freshman year, financial aid did not cover what was needed of my college debts because they took my father's,my mother's, my bother's and my income and summed it up. All the money I have saved up while supporting my family had to go to the school to keep my education going and still I had money that was due. My mother had to pitch in and assist me with my debt when I knew she alone had trouble just getting by. So there I was in school with no money to my name all the work I put into saving up for school was no longer there and I had a struggling family back home. This is now my 3rd year of school and really I’m not sure how I have made it this far. Every year seems like a struggle to pay off my debts to the school and I wonder if I’m going to be able to afford the next.
Is there an answer to all the struggling families that want to send their children to school? We live in a society in which, when it comes to education, school is in reach for those who can afford it; those who are lucky enough to have the wealth to send their children to school. With school funding being cut each year and the middle class slowly getting poorer, it makes me wonder how some of these families will be able to send their children to school without struggling anymore then they should. Imagine going through college and walking across stage without worrying how you are going to pay back the ridiculous amount of money that it costs to attend a higher education. Imagine growing up and sending your children to school without worrying about the debt that is soon to be. In a country in which the middle class is fading fast to the poor regions, wouldn’t it make sense to provide free higher education to all? Instead of having families relying on welfare systems, they could rely on a higher education to support themselves and their loved ones instead of hesitating to make the move to college because of the cost.
This is not a “poor me” essay. There are many other families far worse off than mine is I understand that; but imagine a country that can have people from different classes attending school and have no worries about debt. A society in which to get an education doesn’t require having a well financed family but merely requires dedication and hard work for anyone who wishes to attend. That would lift stress of the shoulders of many college students and families including my own. But for now I have to focus on my schooling because the cost of my education is too much for me to fail and there is no going back. There is no turning back now. I cannot afford to lose.
