The student lamented that her friends were all focused on leaving home and having experiences, such as living in a dorm, that she wouldn’t have. “At my graduation,” she wrote, “college talk was common.
When people found out that I was attending the (local) community college, the response that I got more often-than-not was ‘Oh? Community college? I’m sorry.’”
The teenager came to the right spot to share her angst. She
received an encouraging response from a community college dean,
who is a regular blogger on the Web site devoted to higher ed news.
In commiserating with the student, the dean, who writes anonymously
on community college issues, noted that it makes no difference where
you start a college career, but it does matter what you do with the education
you receive.
The dean attended what he called a SLAC (snooty liberal arts college).
The price tag was so high that he didn’t pay off the last loan until
he was 35 years old. Here is a snippet of his advice:
If you’re worried about beer or boyfriends, don’t be. There
will be plenty of opportunity for both. (A clarinetist I briefly
dated once said, in apparent seriousness, “Men are like buses.
If I miss one, there’ll be another in fifteen minutes.” I couldn’t
decide if that was mere callousness or comic genius.) Dorms
are a lot less interesting than they’re cracked up to be. Friends
will be made wherever, and the upside of the tough job market
for professors is that some really great professors can be found
just about anywhere.
If you go the community college route, my advice would be to
demand from it the fullest experience it can offer. Join a few
clubs, plug into the grapevine, look for an honors program,
join Phi Theta Kappa (community college honors organization)
if/when you can, get involved.
If you choose to treat it as less than a “real college,” that’s what
you’ll get. But if you take ownership of your experience, you’ll
be well ahead of your peers elsewhere who drink their way
through indifferent studies. And yes, you’ll have much lower
loan payments when you get out, which means you’ll have
more options. This is not to be sneezed at.
If you’re considering attending a community college, keep reading.
In the next three chapters, you’ll learn how to evaluate community
colleges and increase your chances of being prepared for the
ultimate leap to a four-year school.
Action Plan
A community college can be an excellent way to begin your college experience.
Source: The College Solution: A Guide for Everyone Looking for the Right School at the Right Price
