Does anyone regret it?

[PonyGirl93]

I think this is an important topic because each person needs to weigh the pros and cons carefully for their individual situation.

Regret is one of my biggest concerns for this age group because there are a lot of unknowns.

Personally, I think I would have liked the non-traditional route for college credit in high school, the traditional-route when I was college age, and the non-traditional again when I got older. I wish I had had a choice.

Since I watched you earn your degree, I feel invested in your progress and success.

In your case, you have completed a college degree. No matter what happens in life, you will always have that and it may open doors that you don't know about, yet. (For instance, a lot of people seem to be able to just use the fact that they have any degree to have careers in unrelated fields.)

If I remember correctly, this degree was only going to be the first step in pursuing your goal. I don't know what happened to your plans, but I do know that other members of this forum have regrouped on their educational strategies.

I suspect that whole degree cost less than others have spent changing majors or transferring schools in the traditional setting. My mom calls that kind of stuff the "tuition of life". (I hope some of your credit from your previous degree counted toward your current degree to lessen the blow a bit.)

I'm finding out that a lot of my current classmates already have graduate degrees or are doctors. I'm sure there are a variety of reasons to explain why we are all pursuing the same graduate degree right now.

Feel free to use any of these thoughts in your essay. I hope it helps you in some way, too.

Thanks!

Yes, to make a long story short, I guess you could say my plans changed. I decided I didn't want to be a lawyer, and none of the grad programs my degree qualified me for had good job prospects.

As I learned more about the world outside of the ultraconservative fundamentalist rock I grew up under (no offense to any subrockdwellers here ), I decided I wanted to pursue something in the sciences. Actually I was interested in a biology degree to start with, but my mother vetoed. So here I am. Jumping into grad school with a non-science/engineering degree isn't feasible. I took the ACT and got a nearly perfect score. In an ironic turn of events, I probably could have gotten a full ride to nearly any school I wanted to go to. Now, because I have another degree, most schools will not give me institutional aid.

Anyway, that's the story.