Tomorrow is the first day of classes at University of Cincinnati, but my first class isn't until Thursday evening. Even so, this week marks the beginning of a new chapter in my life. For me, getting my graduate degree means equipping myself with the tools I need to work in a field I love. I know I have the heart for this work, but now I need the knowledge, and I'm excited to get started.
My Master of Social Work degree won't be easy, and it certainly doesn't come cheap. One quarter at UC costs $4,412 alone! That amounts to about half of my salary last year. Fortunately, a large chunk of my Segal AmeriCorps Education Award combined with a small university scholarship paid the bill this time, but I'll be facing this same expense in another four months, and another four months after that, and so on for the next two years. Thanks to my parents, I was fortunate enough to escape my undergrad with no student loan debt, but I'm not sure I'll be so lucky this time around.
Did I mention that $4,412 was only for tuition? Today I dropped in at UC to pick up a few other things I'll need this quarter:
That's one student ID, six textbooks, and one parking pass for the quarter. Would you like to guess how much this cost? $200? $300? Not even close.$650. And that's the expense for just this quarter. Next quarter will have its own set of books and another parking pass to buy. And so will the next and the next and the next. But we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. For now, everything is taken care of, and I'm ready to go. As costly as education can be, I know that it is an investment in my future and in the future of my family.
Cheers to the future!
No comments:
Post a Comment