College- a word that every high school student fears the most. It is the first time you will have to be on your own and responsible for your own things, and that is just after you get accepted into a college/and or university. The process leading up to it can be the most stressful part of it. You have to get letters of recommendation, applications, visiting the school physically, piles of fees, scholarships and then of course, once you make your final decision as to where you want to go, you have to deal with endless payments (student loans, books, room fees, etc.). Oh, and the most important part of college, you have to figure out what you want to do with the rest of your life and stick with it, or else the process to change your major could be very difficult. If you think about it just a few months before entering college you were asking if it was okay to use the restroom and now you are in charge of thousands of dollars and not missing your 8 AM class, how do you feel about that?
Most kids, nowadays, grow up in a time hearing from adults that “if you don’t get a college education you will just end up working at McDonald’s for the rest of your life”, and no kid wants to hear that, they want to be as successful and happy as possible. Kids have been “brainwashed” into thinking the only way they will be successful in life is if they go to college right after high school. But what happened, to taking a year off? Figuring out what you want to do with your life? Being able to travel and learn new things from being surrounded by different cultures? You can learn just as much if you travel to a different state then you can in a classroom with a professor telling you his theory on the number 2. Now I’m not saying that college isn’t important, of course it is. It gets you on the right track to life, helps you get a degree in the field you want to go and work in. But it is also very, very long years of paying off student loans, paying for books/supplies and rooming with people you barely know. Yes, you get to go into a job that you really enjoy, but is it really all worth it?
Psychologists have studied the change in moods between a student going to high school and attending college right after. Not only are they miserable, but they are already in debt before the age of 30. So a college student has to worry about their school work, their jobs (if they have one), and how they are going to be able to pay for their next semester at school. Obviously their mood is going to decrease and they will be even more stressed out then they were when they were applying for schools.
We all know college is the right path to go on, we all know it will help us get a good paying job and we will be able to live a happy life financially, but maybe not emotionally. Just think about how stressed you are thinking/applying for school, now times that level of stress by 1,000- that is what college will be like, think about what will make you happy in general. For just a minute don’t think about the money, money doesn’t buy happiness. Just take a year off, sure you will be behind a year, but at least you will be mentally happy and you will be prepared to start the path of adulthood.
