My sister is a senior in high school this year. Our babysitter is a senior this year. My cousin is a junior. That means that within mere months they will be freshmen in college. Where has the time gone?
I feel like I have been giving the same advice to them and to my former students. I am going to outline some questions you can ask when you're thinking about higher education, whether for yourself or for your loved ones.
First: What are your long-term goals? Where do you want to be in 10 years? Yes, 10 years. I know it's a long, far-away frame of mind to capture. But if you can envision where you want to be in 10 years, it will help you understand what you should do in the meantime. If you're 14, in 8th or 9th grade, where do you want to be in 15 years?
If you know now that you want to study law, you have to have the GPA in undergrad that will get you into law school. Many law schools depend as much on reputation of your undergraduate university as they do on your GPA. For example, if you go to Simpson College and have a 3.7, it might not carry the same weight as if you went to Duke and have a 3.7. It matters less that you choose a smaller school, like Simpson, and more that you shoot for a 4.0. And, yes, most post-graduate programs expect that you have at least an A-average in undergrad.
Second: What kind of money do you want to invest? Is your family for-sure going to help you? How likely is it that you'll receive scholarship money?
Third: What kind of school do you see yourself attending? Do you want to graduate from a 4-year institution? A 2-year institution? Can you see yourself far away from family? Do you want to stay relatively local?
Fourth: Are you volunteering? If you're not, get out and do it! It will change your life! Serving others, especially those in need, will stir up passions you never knew you had. It is those passions that will drive you to the right place, be it next year or 10 years from now.
An anecdote in regard to my first point, What are you long-term goals?
I'll be honest: all I cared about when I was an 18-year-old was graduating from college, and, at some unforeseen point in the future, having a family. (Both of which I achieved!) It took me until my senior year of college to realize that I really wanted to work with kids, that becoming a teacher was my woman-of-the-twenty-first-century dream. I figured it out while volunteering with a program called Kids' Café, where underprivileged kids got a meal and some after-school tutoring. At that point, I had already accrued so much debt that staying at Salem to get ready for their Teacher Education program was not an option. And I didn't have the resources to get any formal training elsewhere. Thankfully, North Carolina, at the time, had a program that allowed college grads three years to take all the necessary tests to receive their teaching certificate. But after my first year, I could not stick with it. I wish I could stand on a pedestal and claim that I became an advocate for children of poverty, that I changed the lives of every student who walked through my doors. Truly, though, I wasn't prepared because I had not thought ahead. So I became an accounts receivable clerk at a small corporation in Northwest Arkansas, where my husband and I ended up settling.
I had to face the question, what it means to be happy, to follow my dreams, to envision myself standing on my own two feet, both professionally and financially, when I was a college grad, with a less-than-mediocre transcript, and a dead-end job. My husband knew I wasn't really happy at my job. He knew I had loved my students, however difficult the teaching job had been. He really believed I had the brains to not only get into the MAT program at the UofA, but that I had the ability to chase my dreams. He also faced the reality that if anything tragic were to happen to him, that I would be left in this world, not only without him, but without a profession I loved, and with no means to support myself. So I applied, got in, got a little scholarship, and worked my butt off for a full year to get my MAT in Secondary Spanish.
If you can face the question, "What does it mean to you to be happy, to follow your dreams, to envision yourself standing on your own two feet, both professionally and financially?" now, instead of putting off the inevitable, you will be far more prepared for undergrad and/or post-graduate work, professional and financial peace, and emotional, spiritual, and physical harmony.
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