Tonight is my self-designated College Research night. I got off of work earlier than expected, and decided that I still need to do something productive with my life instead of watching Netflix for hours on end. So I'm researching.
Well... "researching," anyway. I've been looking up the tracked tags of my schools of interest on Tumblr and seeing what the popular opinion of actual students is about the school, rather than just the glowing biases they feed you at tours. I also have been looking into overall job happiness of my chosen career, and the possible wages.
Ideally, I want to work at a private preschool. Or own one. I'm planning on majoring in Early Childhood Education.
The wage is pretty deplorable. I'll be the first to admit that I'm fully aware of that. That's kind of why I'm aiming for a higher education, so I can earn more money and maybe get into the pool of qualified teachers for in-demand preschools. Private makes about $35K a year, public about $23K.
But I'm not interested in money. Not really, anyway. I've been a teacher at heart my entire life. And children are quite literally my ultimate passion. Right now, I work with them. I'm hoping my experience with them will give me a competitive edge.
But there's still time to figure all of that out. Right now, I have to worry about college.
The fact of the matter is, I cannot afford out-of-state tuition. Just can't do it. I refuse to go into massive student debt. With scholarships and grants and in-state tuition, and a supplementary job, I can probably squeak by with minimal to no debt. It all just costs so much money! It's incredible. I don't know how anybody gets by in this economy.
Well, anyway. I've pretty much narrowed it down to two universities of interest. The first is University of Florida in Gainesville, which is about a four-hour drive. It's one of the biggest and most prestigious in the state and it LOVES IB students. It gives you a lot of credit for your diploma classes. It's pretty much the fall-back school of every kid in my class - for a lot, it's the goal. I have many friends planning on going there. It's a wonderful school, very very big and renowned for its parties and football team.
The second is Florida Atlantic University. It's about 30 minutes away from my house. It has a good Early Education program, and the school itself has been growing in leaps and bounds recently. My dad works for the Engineering firms there from time to time, and we all kind of have a bit of a connection to it. My boyfriend will be going there in the fall. I have a few other friends, mostly from work, who go there as well.
There are cons to each, too. I didn't feel a connection with University of Florida when I toured. At ALL. I disliked its dorms, I didn't like that the College of Education was in the boonies of the campus, I didn't like the distance from the beach, and I didn't like the college-town setting. I'm not a big partier. I don't drink or smoke. I'm too ***~~~straight edge~~~***. And there's not really a whole lot else to do! I feel like people expect me to go here, almost.
FAU is so close to home. Even though I'd be dorming, I worry that I'd be robbing myself of a real college experience. I've heard unpleasant things about the hoops you have to jump through for housing assignments and class changes.
I'm leaning towards FAU at this point. I want to tour the campus to see more, though.
No comments:
Post a Comment