Being at the eve of paying off my student loans has got me thinking. 

Whether it’s my newsfeed that I 
follow or my general social circles that determine this I’m not sure, but it seems to me that I see a lot of 
complaints about the costs of an education. 

Having been through two different degrees and now working in a field that relates to my studies, I think that people miss a few crucial ideas when approaching college.

Photo by Corna.QTR/CC

1. College isn’t as expensive as people make it out to be. 

College isn’t expensive, people’s lifestyles are expensive. Sure, college isn’t cheap by any means, 

but when I hear that someone walks away from their Bachelor studies with over $100,000 in 

debt, I think that’s a lifestyle problem. People can go to a community college and then transfer 

into a university. You can stay in a state school rather than attend out of state. People can seek 

out renting textbooks instead of buying them new. Can I also just ask – what happened to being 

a broke college student? My point is simply that I think it’s time people stop and reflect for a 

moment about whether the cost of college itself is really what is making the bills so high.  

2. The world revolves around demand and supply. 

People can’t keep pursuing degrees that aren’t applicable in our job market and then at the 

same time complain that your degree hasn’t gotten you a job. If we quit making uninformed 

decisions about the path that we follow, those paths will begin to be less prominent. I hear time 

and time again where people couldn’t find a job after their bachelor’s so they decided to go 

ahead and start their master’s. That's some interesting logic to me. Soooo, you spent money 

on one degree and haven’t put it to use, but somehow you think getting further in debt pursuing 

another one is a good idea?

3. Just because you can get the loan, doesn’t mean you should.

This is where I screwed up. When applying for financial aid, I was provided the option to 

apply for a loan and did. They offered me roughly 3 times as much as my actual costs were so 

that I had money to “offset” my cost of living. By offset, I mean they offered me money that I 

could blow and that’s precisely what happened. People have an opportunity to pick up work 

while they are studying to help with this cost. I think that often students don’t consider the 

options here because it’s easier to just get the extra money in the loan. I often hear the 

argument that banks shouldn’t be allowed to offer such large loans because it’s a bad practice. 

This is said as if the banks are forcing students to take these loans. At the end of the day, a 

person made an active choice and that individual is accountable. 

4. People need to look at their education as an investment.

This point in particular really becomes a bottom line for this subject. We simply don’t live in a 

world where having a degree is going to land you a meal ticket. Maybe we did at some point, 

but we haven’t for a long time. I started my college path trying to pursue something in 

journalism, but ultimately changed course for this very reason. I needed something that was 

going to land me a career, so I approached my decision with that in mind. That means that I had 

to consider my area’s job market and then narrow my choices down from there. Most people 

wouldn’t go dump thousands of dollars into a stock without reviewing its history or estimated 

future performance, so why would you do that with your education?

Let me start this off by saying (or admitting rather) that I am a planner. I can’t help it. Really, truly, I can’t. I tend to freak out if things don’t go as planned and can get myself into quite a fit if someone else changes or impacts my plan. Any fellow planners will understand this, while other people probably just think I’m a crazy control freak.

Well, I didn’t exactly plan to be young single mother, working, while trying to finish my degree. I also didn’t plan to fall in love with a young single father who was working, while trying to get himself into his career path as well.

I DID plan on having a family that I loved fiercely while also taking summer vacations, family photos, playing board games, and just generally living our perfect life. See what I did there? Yep, I actually tried to plan a perfect family. Talk about setting myself up for failure.

I’m also pretty passionate about exploring different activities and interests for all of us – an idle mind is the devil’s workshop, right? That leaves us with a packed schedule. Add in our mixed schedules with the children and you’ve got yourself a nice mix batch of chaos.

Like a good planner, I will wrack my brain, adjust, swap, plan our family days and, inevitably, something will come up that ultimately leads to a meltdown (whether it’s actually one of my kids, or me doing the melting, tends to be random!). This vicious cycle repeated itself more times than I’d care to admit and left me drained…and then one day I decided to listen to my Husband…Yeah, that does happen every so often! ;)

See, my Husband happens to be the exact opposite of me in a lot of areas and let me tell you, it has been a breath of fresh air. He does not like to have a packed schedule and can truly enjoy a day of relaxation and just going with the flow. I always feel like we need to monopolize on the opportunity of whatever we are doing and MAKE THE MOST OUT OF IT. Isn’t that something right there? My end goal is always to relax and enjoy the moment but somehow I feel the need to force it and that simply doesn’t work.

I stopped trying to force a happy moment and instead have decided to just stop and let the day or event transpire. A perfect example would be comparing two separate trips to Disneyland. In one, we got there as the park opened, we hit every activity we could, we made it to scheduled shows, and we left when the park closed. All of us were wiped out, cranky, and pretty miserable by the end of the day! On the other, we woke up (without an alarm) and had a nice breakfast, got to the park after that and then wrapped up around dinner time so we could eat off site and then went back to the hotel and swam a bit before bed. We had an amazing day and the kids still talk about that trip. I enjoyed myself the entire time.    

The same scenario has played out time and time again regardless of what the activity is. We've had great, quality moments doing the simplest of things if I stop trying to force it. 

It’s pretty amazing how much fun you can have in the flow. And, for all you fellow planners, you can always plan to not have a plan too!