Right now it seems as if I’m at a crossroads. I have to make some serious decisions about my life and where I’m going, and I hate making decisions. I agonize over them until I begrudgingly pick a choice or a choice picks me. The only thing keeping me sane right now is crafts. I was so stressed out when I made my journal but cutting all of the little squares and gluing everything into place soothed me. Today in my Crafts class we started paper mache, and I was able to relax. Even the sunweaving we’ve been doing — believe me when I say I hated it — is soothing to me now. I guess it’s because the busier I keep my hands and mind at once, the less I have to think about the choices I need to make.
I’ve pretty much made my biggest decision, and I don’t like it.
This semester is my last for my Associates degree. I was planning on transferring to a university forty-five minutes away from my house so I could get my Bachelors degree. My car decided it was on a mission to thwart my plans, and so it came down to this: get a better car, or go to SCSU. The thing was, there was no way I could go to SCSU without a better and more reliable car. I decided to ignore it for a while, and put in applications to my current school and SCSU to graduate and transfer. Well, the elephant — AKA my car — didn’t go away. Things with it are getting gradually worse and it’s become apparent that I can’t just hope it survives long enough for me to go to SCSU for at least one semester.
I also have a money problem. I’ve been going to NVCC — my current school — for five semesters, and each semester has cost me nothing because of financial aid (FAFSA). Without that financial aid I wouldn’t be going to college. Since I’d already applied for FAFSA for NVCC for the Fall 2008/Spring 2009 school year, I won’t be able to apply for FAFSA for SCSU until the next school year. The good news is, I get a refund of the FAFSA in the spring. The bad news is it won’t help me pay for any classes/tuition at SCSU until later. I don’t know where I would come up with the money. I thought about getting a full time job, but I’d have to go to school part time and then it would take me longer to finish.
My aunt suggested I take next semester off and work full-time. I could save up for a better car and maybe even get my own place. I could save enough money to fall back on in case I don’t get the FAFSA in the future. Ideally, it would work. The problem is, I don’t know if I can get a full-time job. I’m not sure if my current job will let me go to full-time temporarily, and if they don’t I’m not sure I’ll be able to find something else. I’m also wary of taking any sort of time off because I don’t want to end up not going back to school. I know myself; I am a procrastinator by nature. If I don’t do it NOW, I might never do it.
So here is my solution, if all goes well: I am going to ask at work about going temporarily full-time. I will work full-time from December to August. I’ll get a better car and save some money. I’ll take a couple night classes at SCSU to get started, but only a couple so that I can definitely afford them. In the fall, I’ll go back to working part-time and start school again full-time. Basically, it all relies on whether or not my job will pull those strings for me. Otherwise, I’m gonna have to find another full-time job and I doubt they would let me go down to part-time once I’ve started full-time. Yikes.
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Tags: car problems, frustration, money problems, personal issues, school, stress
Scars Can Speak is the official blog of Letters of Love, written by teens and adults from all over North America who have experienced depression, self-injury, addiction, and more. If you would like to blog with us, send an email to 
Oh wow, that is a lot going on at one time. Everything will work out though and it will all fall into place. I hope that your job lets you go to full time and that you don’t have to go looking for another job. I know how hard it is to find another job. But it sounds like you have a really good plan and I’m sure it will all work out. *Hugs*
@Jenna: I hope so. Unfortunately it doesn’t look like I can go FT at my job, so if they can’t give me more hours (like, 30/wk), I’m gonna have to find a second job. Sigh.
Thanks for the hugs. (:
[...] a Catch 22, just like my own financial situation. I ranted a little about this on Scars Can Speak (the Letters of Love blog), and I’ve been writing in my own [...]