The College Fix

By Laura Ingeno, USA TODAY:

Not going to college at 18 never even felt like an option to me. If I had told my teachers or my friends that I planned to move to California right after high school, I think they may have said, “Cool,” but secretly thought, “She’s nuts.”

But like my mother, I really didn’t have any definite plans after high school about what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. Unlike her though, I was reassured that my parents would help pay the bill for my education.

Looking back, I wish I had followed in my mother’s footsteps. I wish I had traveled, and really lived on my own without the safety net and structure of a college campus to fall back on. I wish I had worked and saved enough money to pay for my own college education. I wish I had taken time to figure out my interests and strengths in order to figure out what I wanted to study.

I think true signs of adulthood are being financially independent, but more importantly, being able to make deliberate choices that you are happy with.

Many of us are being pushed to go to college right away, because that is what we are “supposed to do,” even though we don’t really know what we want to get out of it. It ends up feeling like another four years of high school.

Next year, I’ll graduate with two degrees in my hand. But I know, unfortunately, I’ll still have too much growing up and figuring out to do.

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