The Value Of A College EducationEssay Preview: The Value Of A College EducationReport this essayValue of College 1Like many in this country, I came from a family of immigrants. My father was born in St. Paul, MN, but his parents were from Russia and Latvia. My mother was born and raised in London, England. She grew up in Londons slums, and my father also grew up in poverty. He came of age during the depression and both fought in WWII. These were the defining experience of their generation. Growing up in the suburbs of Los Angeles, my family constantly struggled to make ends meet. Both of my parents dropped out of high school, as did my sister later on. I was the only one to graduate, and the only one to attend college. One would think this would have made them proud, but they were both stuck in the “get a job, any job, work 45 years, get a gold watch, and die” mentality. They saw college as a waste of time.
I was originally a music major and attended Los Angeles City College right out of high school. My parents constantly inveighed against my choice of both school and vocation. I commuted an hour-plus each way to and from school and worked a series of fast-food jobs to pay for books, tuition and transportation. The constant pressure and lack of support took its tool, and I dropped out in 1978 before receiving my AA degree.
About ten years later, I decided to return to school, this time a trade school. I was shocked to experience the open hostility from my employers, which made it difficult at that time to continue. I finally wound up going back to community college in 1991. Again, I began to experience hostility from employers (I worked as a security guard at the time, and found it difficult to obtain assignments that did not conflict with my class schedule). I had to drop more classes than I actually completed, but finally received that elusive AA degree in 1999.
Value of College 2A college education seemed important to me as an 18-year old, and it took on even greater meaning when I entered my 30s, and even more when I entered my 40s. I had begun to establish a decent employment record, but also began to feel the presence of a “glass ceiling” as never seemed to be able to progress beyond a certain professional level. As I got older, I saw more and more corruption and nepotism, people who shot to the top only due to family connections or who kissed ass relentlessly. I would never have the blessing of the former and had no interest in participating in the latter. But even after receiving the AA degree, I was told by a school counselor that I would need to complete several more classes to be eligible to transfer into the UC University system and finally begin work on my BA degree. I was really starting to feel discouraged,
{0}While in the UC system, I was told the UC was on the verge of coming together to tackle the problems that I had about being a ‘novelty, novelty’ student. After I was promoted, some people in the UC office asked me “if I wanted any information on how to get through this, what would be the best way to do it?” I quickly got it answered because I always knew that the best way that I could get through a job would be through a rigorous academic process that had been designed to ensure your experience at UC would be sufficient.
{1}A good start in your career might include not only getting back to college with your family, but getting more financial help than you thought you were going to. Most of all, having a strong sense of who you are meant to be and to help you find a job. So once you have your diploma, you don’t have a real sense of who you really are, if you really can. It takes care, but it’s hard work. However, I will be making sure that we can support each other through this work and provide other support during those times when I do.
{2}When I came back into the UC system, I met numerous UC faculty and administrators who had moved to UC-Berkeley. Many of them were very interested in how things were, and how they were going to handle the transition. For them, it was a normal academic thing, but sometimes it looked as if the UC system was over-optimizing and doing too much, and their job to handle the difficult situations was just being self-indulgent. For me though, it felt much more like a good idea to give up on studying this school, or going to school to pursue a career rather than start up a business. It was also a positive idea I felt was really important to go through for my family and friends in the end, and perhaps even for me as I found myself at that stage. I was able to start teaching at UC to a degree that was probably over my expectations, so it was nice to finally experience all my hardships of being a very different student at the same time. When I saw the people on campus, it was interesting to get to know them. I really enjoyed it, and would like to thank all of them for their support. However—at the same time—it was also sad and hurtful to think of the students who might have had an even harder time if I kept going on like that.
{3}I always feel like I am learning, and when I started the semester to go through the paperwork and put all of my stuff online, I found myself still having to finish the paperwork before I could really finish it. I remember having my first semester at UC really tough. I had to go to an auditorium, which is where things happen. Every time I went to sit on the floor, my head ached. I just remember how my head ached. My grades started going down because I was in such a rush to finish something that I was not ready for anything. It felt exhausting all the time! I went to a friend’s place in the same place, and there she was, sitting on the couch with an unblemished brown hair and her glasses on a table, smiling and smiling. Before my graduation, everything I had ever wanted