The beginning of a semester is difficult for most of us. We play with schedules, attend extra classes while we consider what to take and at the end of it all, we come to a conclusion and get permission codes to add a course, swap one out or drop one that we decided not to take. While there are several factors that go into one’s personal decision to drop a course, there are some students whose decisions are purely economical.
Most students do not have the privilege of parents who can pay for their college education. Several are working in tandem with their scheduled course load. Many survive only because of the financial aid they are able to receive, which supports them from semester to semester. So in the decision to drop a course, there are some students who make the financial realization that the more courses they drop, the more of their awarded financial aid money can go towards living expenses. By dropping a class or two, hundreds of dollars enter their bank account and perhaps on that money they can survive throughout the semester.
This may sound absurd to some, especially those who have made it through their college years determined never to take out loans to supplement their survival. However, not everyone can work and go to school at the same time. There should be no judgement here. Everyone has their own path through life, and we each handle stress in different ways. I discovered this from personal experience. My freshman and sophomore years of college, I worked part-time in restaurants while taking 12 to 15 credits per semester. I coped, and it worked relatively fine. But I am the type of person who absolutely loathes not being able to give 100 percent to my school work. To me, the work I hand in and the tests I take are personal reflections of my effort to understand the material and my personal commitment to myself as a young scholar. When my time was divided between school and work, I was unable to give my all to my education. Most of my time was spent working when not in class, so it was difficult to keep up with school work and I struggled even to pass certain courses. For financial reasons, I took a break from school after my associate’s degree and worked full-time. Years later, I decided to go back to school and transferred here to the U. I attempted to hold my full-time job while also going to school full-time. I quickly discovered that it would not work for me. I postponed my education a little longer while I worked more in order to afford returning to school without working. I then resigned from my job and took 19 credits last semester.
My counselor wisely advised against such a heavy course load, especially for my first semester back, but I knew what I could handle and was confident in that knowledge. All of my time was focused on my education, and I had the most successful and satisfying semester of my academic life to date. However, as my finances diminished, I had to make some economic decisions with my schedule this semester and drop a certain number of credits. College is a time where each of us discovers what works best for us and how financial and academic stress plays into these decisions. Taking time off of school is too common and most often regretted.
The catch in all this is that in order to afford college, most of us seek scholarships. In order to obtain scholarships, you must excel in your coursework. But in order to survive in the meantime, you work in conjunction with school and struggle to keep up your grades throughout the stress and often perform below scholarship requirements. How can you ever get a scholarship if you cannot afford to be fully devoted to your schooling? Of course, there are several who do it — and my hat is off to them. Many more students, however, are left watching their stress and debt increase, grades drop and hopes of scholarship assistance get further and further out of reach.
If you’ve had to drop classes due to financial considerations, know that you are not alone. Put your entire self into your classes and excel. The last thing you want is to be struggling to pay off loans in 25 years, remembering the time you wasted and the education you neglected.