Live And Learn

     Twenty-six years ago my mother dropped out of college and to this day it remains one of her biggest regrets. She was going to school to get an associate’s degree in paralegal at Husson University in Bangor, Maine. She lived on campus in one of the many dorms and participated in many college activities, such as having an on campus job. She made many new friends and enjoyed many of the social aspects of college.

      By the third semester of college she began to realize that she wasn’t enjoying what she was studying for, to be a paralegal. Her classes were becoming a bore and the work was becoming tedious and uninteresting. She also didn’t want to continue paying money to study a major that wasn’t interesting anymore. And with all that she decided to drop out with only 1 semester left to get her degree.

     Now she realizes that this wasn’t the best decision as she had to move home with no job and no money and rely on her parents for support. Trying to find a job without a degree was very difficult as most well paying jobs require you to have a degree. She started working a minimum wage job which paid at the time $6.50. Having this small of an income made it incredibly hard to pay of her student loans, she was left with from when she was in school.

     She knows this was a mistake and realizes that she should have stayed in school, finished her last semester and gotten a degree or changed her major. This would have helped her to get a better paying job which would have helped her pay off her loans, move out of her parent’s house sooner and be more financially secure. At nineteen, it is hard to see what the future will bring when you are only thinking of what is going on right now and not what the consequences may be. She learned a valuable lesson which is to always finish what you start no matter how hard, boring or tedious, it is. As it will make life easier in the long run.