Getting into college isn’t hard — but staying there is

So after three weeks of dealing with exams, team group meetings, deadlines, homework assignments and work I finally thought I was able to breathe again until I had a visit with the financial aid department this past Friday.
So after putting in so much work for the past year, studying till four or five in the morning to make sure I get A’s in my exams and finals, reading and finishing assignments and taking advantage of all extra credit given from my professors I basically feel at the moment that I’ve been slapped in the face. So I received an email from the registrar’s office a few weeks ago basically telling me I owed them a few thousand dollars from tuition and room and board. I was surprised because I thought my scholarships and other aid was going to cover it. I immediately walked over to the financial department to figure out what was wrong. The kind lady told me that the Texas Legislature hadn’t provided the funding for a scholarship renewal that I qualified for and they weren’t going to find out until the 1 of October. So I made the minimal payment because I was told that the Legislature was likely to provide the funding for the scholarship so the financial aid department would just apply it to the rest of my bill and that would take care of it. I went today to check the update of the renewal and apparently I’m probably going to owe the rest of the bill because the legislature. I was upset when they told me this and demanded to speak to the head of the department so she came and the receptionist and the head of the department started to explain why the legislature was tardy with their renewal. She started to explain that this past year the government wanted to make most high school seniors feel like they could afford going to college so they spent a lot of their money providing first year students with financial aid. I felt she was on my side when she started to mention that the problem was that they kind of lost their focus with helping the students who are enrolled in college currently. She told  me that it wasn’t my fault that I didn’t get the renewal since I’m a 4.0 student who’s involved in extra-curricular activities but rather the government. She told me to be positive and told me that the financial aid department would know if the renewal would be funded in the beginning of November but it doesn’t really matter since the final payment is due at the same time. I told her that I’m not the person to be optimistic. I don’t believe good things will happen so I’m making sure I’ll be prepared when the worst happens. She looked shocked and told me that most students she talks to like to deal with their problems in a realistic manner but then she started to discuss other ways to deal with the payment.
Instead of writing my column about the firm golf scramble I played in two weeks ago or my Come and Take It experience which was bad and good, I decided that this would be more interesting and possibly useful to someone. I’m not writing this column to vent my frustration even though I left the department with a lot of anger or to tell readers that I’m poor. I’m writing this column to warn students that the toughest part isn’t being enrolled in college it’s actually staying in it. I feel like I haven’t reaped the rewards that should rightfully be mine.
I do everything I’m supposed to and I still struggle in everything I do. I know several people who have quit college because it was too hard or they couldn’t deal with the pressure but that’s just how life is. Life isn’t going to spoon feed you what you’re heart desires. This is true even in one of my classes. I thought my worst subject in school was Economics but I found out this semester that the subject I dread the most is not Economics or English but rather Statistics. My Statistics class is the perfect example of what you have to deal with because the first two weeks of class we started with ¾ of the classroom and by the time we started to touch the difficult subjects only around fifteen or twenty people stayed. I must admit I didn’t do well on my first exam but that doesn’t mean I should drop it or quit (even though I did consider it and talked to my advisor about the effects). The ironic thing was that before I walked to the financial aid department I went to the scholarship department to hand in a few applications.
The head of the department was very helpful and even gave me some good advice and life lessons but the thing that I’ll probably remember most from this day is that life is expensive and I might hope for the best but I’ll be prepared when the best doesn’t arrive.
Happy Birthday and congrats to the Gonzales Cannon for a successful year.
I’m glad to be a part of the team!”