The DISboards found me, or I found them, who knows, twelve years ago. I was a freshman in college. Just a year earlier, I had been through this experience you guys are discussing.
For myself personally: I was the oldest of many kids in a family that could not possibly afford to send me to private college - even state school was a stretch. I was already a scholarship kid at a local private high school. That high school scholarship came about after my mother brought me in, I took the test, she bit her pride, and she point-blank asked for help to give me the opportunities she thought I needed. They acquiesced. A year later, she brought my sister. It could not have been easy. We weren't impoverished ... we just didn't have a spare $10K, like 95% of Americans, but my mother WANTED this for us. They said OK again.
So I applied to college. My mother, there but for the grace of God go she for the hours she spent and the extent of the effort she nobly made, sat at the kitchen table and filled out the FAFSA and hundreds of other pages of forms and never uttered a word of complaint. And then, almost like magic, they came, the thick packages full of documents came in the mail, and I was in, and the financial aid made it possible for me to go to my choice of a few really great schools.
My high school boyfriend, who was born into a very similar situation, got his packages on the same day. We were going to be able to make this happen. We remember going to Wendy's to get burgers to celebrate America. We even knew it at the time. Where else but America would two kids whose parents carefully scrimped to pay the bills get opportunities of a lifetime like this? Even England and Canada don't offer this. We knew it, even at the time. I bet some of your kids know this too. This was 1998. It feels like a long time ago, but it wasn't. A year later, my sister got into her first-choice school with a merit-based financial aid package that made it possible for her too.
So was it worth it? Twelve Disney-loving years have passed
(I finally got to visit Orlando when I was a sophomore, with that amazing boyfriend I mentioned above ... we stayed at All Star Music and it was the most wonderful place I had ever been and the most magical five days).
It was.
I graduated and got a great job at a place that only hires kids from top private schools (yes, I know that it supremely unpopular, but I am telling you the truth. It is easier to get a job out of a fairly established short list of American private universities. Are there exceptions? Sure. Is it by-and-large easier? Absolutely). I worked my tail off. I got promoted. I worked harder. I moved abroad for work. I fell in love, I moved back. I sat on panels and did all kinds of professional things that scared the * out of me. I persevered, I did well, I messed up, I apologized, I persevered, I stayed up late, I read like heck, I learned, I risked, I persevered. I made VP of a major bank at 27 and clipped coupons and I will never have to worry about $ again at almost-30. You guys watched me grow up and I sock away cash like it's a sport.
For the Dave Ramsey loving woman who doesn't want to fill out the FAFSA - I am at BS7 BECAUSE my mother was willing to bite back her pride and fill out the FAFSA. It changed my family tree. My professional success goes right back to my college education because there is no way I would've gotten the first job that set me down this path WITHOUT the FAFSA. I hire now and I look for academic accomplishment. It is a very strong predicator of success. I don't shy away from it.
The funny thing: my sister has done even better, for the same reasons, and now our youngest brother is trumping us all, same reasons. More than effort and more than luck, it was, in no particular order: our mother, America, government financial aid, private financial aid, a willingness to ask, and perhaps most importantly, the ambition that comes with knowing to whom much is given, much is expected -- to quote an Apostle and, nineteen hundred years later, a wartime President.
Great story caradana
give me a break
