Why did you go to college?

[SaSaRai]

What were you looking for to go to college? What was your reason?

 

Was it to go for social interaction, and parties. Was it because you had to in order to follow the career path that you had chosen. Were you doing it for the money that would follow graduation and getting a better job?

 

I'm confused that maybe I'm wanting to go to college for the wrong reasons, and would appreciate some other people's input of what they wanted to get from college.

 

The main goal for me would of course be to go and do my studies, to get a better education, so that when i graduated, i would have a higher paying job. If it wasn't for that, then why would anyone go? Isn't that the whole idea/reason of college in the first place?

[love4life]

I went because I was "supposed to." In hindsight, I wish I could do it NOW after having had a few years of life experience. I would appreciate it and enjoy it more than I did at the time (the academic side, that is).

 

Maybe that's why so many people go back to get their Masters/PhD a few years later. They've realized where their interests lie and how to apply them to a career.

 

I honestly don't think going to college right after high school is the best idea, except for the social aspect and learning what it's (sort of) like to be on your own.

 

Also, as for getting a "higher paying" job. Everyone has a Bachelor's nowadays, and, in any major city (at least here in DC), don't expect a starting salary higher than mid 30s - low 40s.

[smickly]

I went to college to get the job I wanted

 

The social and not having to grow up right away aspects were just a bonus.

[Kiwi_Sweet]

What were you looking for to go to college? What was your reason?

 

Was it to go for social interaction, and parties. Was it because you had to in order to follow the career path that you had chosen. Were you doing it for the money that would follow graduation and getting a better job?

 

I'm confused that maybe I'm wanting to go to college for the wrong reasons, and would appreciate some other people's input of what they wanted to get from college.

 

The main goal for me would of course be to go and do my studies, to get a better education, so that when i graduated, i would have a higher paying job. If it wasn't for that, then why would anyone go? Isn't that the whole idea/reason of college in the first place?

I'm really happy that you asked this question, because I think within this past year, i lost clear focus of WHY I am in college. I think at a time or another everyone loses track of why they are in college and it just becomes the same old endless routine.

 

But, now that you mentioned this..I think I will take the time to sit and ponder this question.

 

If I can recall, my main purpose for attending college was "MONEY", but then as I got into school because I was maintaining a 4.0 for awhile, and I actually began enjoying learning new things. But then during sophmore year, I began slowing down, because life was kicking in, and I was putting my education on the back burner. Now, today, I don't have a 4.0, 1.5 years later, I have a 2.30, and I failed every class that I took last semester. Three F's. Yup...I'm ashamed to say it, but I have been through so much this past semester and kind of "gave up". My grandma is dieing, my family ALL needs me, and I forgot about myself and what I need. So, I finally realized, that I need to start working on myself again. I didn't get kicked out of school, THANK GOODNESS. I'm still hanging in there with a thin piece of string. I managed to still obtain above a 2.00.

 

However, my financial aid will be terminated and I will have to pay for my own college education from here on out, or until I bring my attempted and passed hours up. Hopefully, the school will reinstate it for me next semester, but if not I will have to pay the price. Funny thing is--is that I finally start taking my nursing classes. THE CLASSES THAT ARE THE MOST IMPORTANT....FIGURES...Things usually work out like that....

 

SO, yeah, NOW, my main reason for being is school is to become a more educated person and to do something good for myself. I love learning new things and I LOVE helping people. Instead of going to school for the MONEY like I did in the beginning, I am in school now, in hopes to really HELP people when I become a nurse.

 

It was nice getting that off my chest...

[Kiwi_Sweet]

 

The main goal for me would of course be to go and do my studies, to get a better education, so that when i graduated, i would have a higher paying job. If it wasn't for that, then why would anyone go? Isn't that the whole idea/reason of college in the first place?

 

There are so many reasons why people go to college. People doing it for the experience and education; people doing it for someone else; people doing it to get away from home; people doing it just becasue; people doing it because they are retired. There are millions of reasons why people go to college.

 

If you ask a lot of young people, I'm sure their answer will be to get a good job and make a decent salary. I think a lot of people go for that reason, but then realize after doing it for sometime, that there was another reason all along. Make sense??

[RedonontheWall]

Going to college is one of those rare things where the benefits almost always outweigh the costs. You get a degree, which is always better than no degree. You're bound to make new friends, meet interesting people. If you move away from home, you'll get that rich experience which will help prepare you for a life on your own. Not to mention that colleges have smaller communities of people within them that you can mingle with and eventually join if you want. You'll have professors and advisors who can help you figure out what the heck you want to do with your life. I guess what I'm trying to get at here is that you get a lot of life experience with college along with the education that will help you find a decent job. It'd be hard to replicate this unique experience anywhere else.

 

Course, I say all this forgetting there are times I wish I had put college off longer rather than jumping in right after high school. I wish I had taken some time off to travel...you know, do the EuroRail, drive accross the U.S. and Canada. Now that I'm a part of the post-grad "real world" I doubt if I'll have a chance to do that any time soon.

[love4life]

Course, I say all this forgetting there are times I wish I had put college off longer rather than jumping in right after high school. I wish I had taken some time off to travel...you know, do the EuroRail, drive accross the U.S. and Canada. Now that I'm a part of the post-grad "real world" I doubt if I'll have a chance to do that any time soon.

 

I've done ZERO traveling since graduation because there's never a "good time" to go (plus, there's not enough paid time off to really take a good, long break).

 

That aside, life in the corporate world is pretty breezy.

[buckdawg]

i can't lie. i went for the football team

 

that and my mom worked for OSU and tuition was half off

[Kiwi_Sweet]

i can't lie. i went for the football team

 

that and my mom worked for OSU and tuition was half off

 

OSU?? That's like two hours away from where I live..

 

MY b/f goes to Univ of Toled. He has free tuition now, because his mom works for University of Toledo Medical Center (was known as MUO before the big merger)...

[Kiwi_Sweet]

I go to Owens *yawn*

[buckdawg]

ha! cool. my mom was a nurse at the hospital too.

[flower99]

I went to college because after highschool I became a waitress & then found out I was pregnant. I stayed a waitress till I had my baby, got maternity leave but when that finished...I knew I needed a better paying job with better hours.

So i went to college. When I finished I found a great job with great pay & great hours.

[RayKay]

First time - I was determined I wanted to be a lawyer and needed my undergrad before I could go to law school of course.

 

I really liked school, and wanted to go for the learning. It was never a question in my mind I would! Decided two years into it I was not quite ready to go for the law degree and unsure of what I really wanted, so finished my B.A. and then went into working in a couple different sectors (financial services, then purchasing/contract management).

 

Decided I WAS now ready to go back to grad school, and have been in law school the past couple years. Definitely not for money - plan on going into legal aid (preferably family law/child protection or poverty law/public interest law) - but for the automatism, the challenge and being able to work in a "community orientated environment".

 

Don't regret the B.A. at all, if I had not gotten it, I would of been in school many more years before becoming a lawyer (7-8!) and it DID matter to employers that I had a degree (and I took further education while working too). It was a great experience for me.

 

Not much of a partier, so it was not for that (even now I don't enjoy the cliquey aspects of grad school and avoid most of the partying except where related to networking - I have a job, a house, a boyfriend, a bunny rabbit, family, and MANY hobbies on top of finding time to study to take care of too and prefer them to partying ).

 

Loving it - don't love exams as much and sometimes it is a bit frustrating when so much of it can be theory over practical (not always, but often) and having been in real world enough I KNOW that is not how it works...but it has been a tremendous growth opportunity for me educationally, professionally and personally.

[amtjrtcet]

I went b/c my daddy told me to. But really, he said he'd pay for my first two yrs & my housing for the first two yrs if I went to LSU. After that I was able to get a few scholarships and paid for the rest.

 

I wanted to be able to have a good career and provide for myself. And that's what I'm doing now. I finished with a degree in marketing and I've been working in my career field since graduation. I recently went back to school and I'm 1/2 way finished with nursing school.

 

An education is sooo important. No days a associates degree is equal to a high school diploma.

[livinginsbi]

I first started college when I was 17 - didn't want to go and thereforeeee dropped out - didn't withdraw - and spent a few years trying to decide what to do.

 

Went back when I was 20, knew that I wanted a career in health care and obtained my associates degree, which got me where I wanted to be carreer wise, financially - not so much. A side note here, since I didn't 'withdraw' from my classes when I was 17, I ended up with four 'F's on my transcript and had to battle my GPA for the 18 months it took for the associates degree.

 

When I was 27, I returned to school (single mom of three, with full time job) to get the bachelor's degree of my career field.

 

Now at 45, I left my career of 15 years, taught Jr high school, worked in retail for 4 years and am now back to my career field.

 

What was the question again... Oh yeah - why did I go - better pay, but not only good money, but working smart, not hard. My district manager, when I worked retail, makes just a little more money than I do right now and he has only a high school education, but he also works 5-6 days a week, a minimum of 10 hours a day. I work - 120 hours a month - I get 4-5 days off a week, so I make just a little less money, but work a whole lot less.

Regarding the last statement of your post - my nephew went away to school, yes he wanted an education, but he mostly left to get away from his parents - probably the smartest thing he ever did. He did graduate from college, but doesn't use his degree in his work - but he does have a good job and was able to get far enough away from his parents so that he can flourish as an adult. So there are more reasons to go to college than just better pay.

 

Sorry it was so long, hope it helped.

[Gath]

What were you looking for to go to college? What was your reason?

 

Was it to go for social interaction, and parties. Was it because you had to in order to follow the career path that you had chosen. Were you doing it for the money that would follow graduation and getting a better job?

 

I'm confused that maybe I'm wanting to go to college for the wrong reasons, and would appreciate some other people's input of what they wanted to get from college.

 

The main goal for me would of course be to go and do my studies, to get a better education, so that when i graduated, i would have a higher paying job. If it wasn't for that, then why would anyone go? Isn't that the whole idea/reason of college in the first place?

 

investment in my future. and it payed off. while there though i didn't take it seriously enough, or it might have payed off better.

[karvala]

Honestly? Partly because it seemed like a fun thing to do, partly because I was interested in the work, but mostly because I wanted to avoid having to work full-time at some dull job or other. Work avoidance was a great motivator to get good enough grades for initial scholarships.

 

After finishing the first degree (BA), decided I still wasn't ready to get a serious job (had an entirely frivolous but enormously fun one on the side instead), so got a scholarship and went to grad school. Finished that one (MA, in a different subject), decided I still didn't want to get a job, got another scholarship and went off to PhD (in a similar subject to the MA).

 

Finally thought I ought to get a job, so I did, for a whole year no less! Albeit an academic job where really I pretended to myself that I was still a student. Got fed up with that, got another scholarship and went back to grad school (MSc, completely different subject again). Thought "this is the life", got another scholarship and did a second PhD (in yet another subject).

 

Finally realised that no self-respecting Univerisity would give me any more scholarships now that I was better qualified than most of the Professors, so I now have a job. An academic job, mind you, and yes, I still really treat it like being a paid student.

 

So what was my reason to go to college? WORK AVOIDANCE!

[Kiwi_Sweet]

ha! cool. my mom was a nurse at the hospital too.

 

In Toledo, at MUO?

[Kiwi_Sweet]

You sound like me. I'm not a big party person either. Although, when I first started college, that's all me and my boyfriend did. We were the ones with the apartment, while everyone lived at home with their parents. So, of COURSE!! We were the Center of the PARTY. However, that flame died down within a year...It was too much drama. Who's going to buy what? Where are we going to get the beer from? Our one "beer guy" who bought us the stuff moved away, and we had no one to buy for us....So we all kind of "broke" apart. Me and Ken did our own thing. He wasn't a BIG drinker anyway. Two of our good friends have now became "pot heads" and we don't see them anymore, so technically they are "ex" friends. I miss them, but there is just so much drama that comes along with them. I had good partying times, but now I've got too much stuff going on to even consider going back to that way. It was FUN while it lasted. haha...

 

So, yep..I'm not a big party person either. I'm in school now to educate myself and learn new things. This semester has been one train wreck, but I'll pull together the next one. I actually start my nursing classes next semester, so it shouldn't be so boring. Plus, I'm going to stop concerning myself with "you know who"...I love my her, but she needs time to think about what she wants in life. I really CAN'T force her to see things my way. NOT that I was trying, I was trying to give her a glimpse of what she would encounter if she kept on the same path...HEY....Candle burned out....

[rocio]

I went to university because that's what my roommate/best friend was doing. I wanted to travel instead so we made a deal. We would both apply and if we were both accepted, we go to school. If one of us was not accepted, we would travel together. We were both accepted but she ended up bailing from me. I got back from a trip to Brazil and she had taken off accross the country. I was already enrolled so I decided to give it a shot.

[buckdawg]

In Toledo, at MUO?

 

no sorry, @ OSU

[Superfreak]

I went because that's what smart people are supposed to do when they gradute highschool and so I felt I had no choice. Good decision? Kindof, it hasn't measured up to what it's billed as. My main issue is that if I could go back, I'd have chosen a better more practical program as I really am not one of those people that can just sit back and enjoy college for "the learning experience". What this amounts to for me is "the learning a bunch of useless stuff I'll never use" experience. If I could go back to the beginning I'd have gotten in to a program that was working towards a specific career or set of careers with real world skills. I'm kind of doing that now but am constrained a bit as I didn't start choosing more "practical" classes until after my 2nd year, by which time choosing a new program was too late so I'm just trying to focus more on the practical components of my current degree.

[capbit]

In the end I think our main reason for going to college is $$$.

[RayKay]

In the end I think our main reason for going to college is $$$.

 

I guess that depends who you mean by "our". If you mean you and some other people you know, I suppose.

 

Not me. I truly like education, I find it empowering.

 

I went (both times) because I like to feel challenged in a career and I wanted something that "suited me". I wanted to have autonomy and opportunities to decide where *I* wanted to work and have some flexibility in my career to go in different paths.

 

And believe me, I would of done better in terms of money if that was my concern going into a trade than I did getting my B.A. but I enjoyed getting my B.A. and I enjoyed the learning experience and what I learned about myself through it.

 

I also am planning on working with legal aid after my law degree which is about far from the "rich lawyer" stereotype you can get. There are definitely people in my class whom ARE in it for the money - but certainly not all.

 

And given the money I have had to put into going back, I certainly have a strange way of "going for the money" - student loans will own me for a few years (though it was worth it and I don't regret it at all).

[CaptainPlanet]

I went to university because that's what my roommate/best friend was doing. I wanted to travel instead so we made a deal. We would both apply and if we were both accepted, we go to school. If one of us was not accepted, we would travel together. We were both accepted but she ended up bailing from me. I got back from a trip to Brazil and she had taken off accross the country. I was already enrolled so I decided to give it a shot.

 

Definently the most entertaining reason on this thread.