Nevertheless, this was an immensely satisfying day for me, and for many reasons.
First, because I was finally done with school; second, because both sides of my family flew in to be there; and third, because it was the culmination of six years (yes, six ) of effort; and finally, because I had managed to do it with my own (mostly borrowed) money.
When I graduated high school in 1993, I had a good start on college -- A.P. classes got me 18 credit hours -- but I had no idea where I wanted to go for college. Public vs. private; in-state or out-of-state; what kinds of things I wanted in a school ... I had no clue where to begin.
Apparently, neither did my closest circle of friends, so we went ended up at the Community College of Lake County. The tuition was affordable, I could continue to stay with my parents, and it seemed like a good way to bide my time.
In retrospect, it wasn't the best decision. I drifted that first year, and because I worked full time, I didn't focus as much on my school work. I didn't do that well, and didn't realize that it would affect my chances of tranferring.
After that first year, though, I started to get some focus -- I figured out that I wanted to major in international business, so I looked at schools where that was a major. I also came across some listing somewhere of top 25 most affordable schools.
Among them was the University of Hawaii, and that inspired me -- how cool would it be to go to school in Hawaii! Other thoughts were the American University of Paris (too expensive), the University of Indiana-Bloomington, and Illinois State University.
I applied to UH-Manoa, but at that point my grade point average was too low, so they transferred my application to the Hilo campus, where I was accepted for the Fall 1995 semester. I had to wait until my spring 1995 grades came in (the one that would life my GPA above the threshhold) to apply for Spring 1996.
My time in Hilo turned out to be a waste of time academically. Because of a state budget crisis, the school had to cut a lot of classes, and as a transfer student I was last in line to register. The only classes I could take were those I either didn't need or didn't want.
Still, it got my foot in the door. In the spring I moved to the Manoa campus on Oahu. Things went well my first semester -- I had a plan for which classes I needed to take and in what order, I'd found a part-time job, and I had a solid set of friends and positive influences from church.
My only problem at that point was financial. In the fall, UH raised tuition 50 percent over the year before. For in-state students that meant tuition raising from $800 to $1200 a semester; for me, though, it jumped from $2600 to just under $4000. UH was no longer an "affordable" school for me.
I decided to take 1997 off to establish residency before I went back. So I registered to vote, got utilities in my name, got a full time job at Bank of Hawaii in March, and returned for the Spring 1998 semester, going directly into the College of Business.
I had to do summer school in order to finish four semesters by the spring of 1999, and there was this program called the Pacific-Asian Management Institute that offered the same classes as what I needed for my major, so that's how I occupied myself that summer. I paid the $50 program fee, attended four lectures, took the required three classes, and -boom!- I had a certificate in Pacific-Asian management.
I continued that fall and the following spring, and after six years I finally graduated. Yes, it took me just as long to graduate as my friend who suffered a stroke at age 18, but hey, I lost a year to the two transfers and another trying to get the resident tuition rate.
When I finished, I had $20,000 in student loan debt and about another $10,000 on credit cards. A lot of money if you consider how much I was making, but I felt proud that I paid for it myself. There were times when I had to borrow money from my parents until my student loan checks came in, but apart from that, I always paid my rent, I never went hungry, and I got to live in Hawaii.
So it wasn't really the kind of "college career" I had imagined in 1993 that I'd have, but I managed to get through it and on to better things in life -- trying to find a full time job.
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