Experience Matters

Want to know a secret?

I didn’t go to college.

Well, I didn’t go to more than 1 semester of college.

We moved. Life happened.  Shrug.

I never really worried about it, there have been a couple of jobs that wanted college degrees, but we were able to count my work experience in lieu of a degree and I have managed to get along just fine in life.

This this started happening:

Acceptance letters have started coming in for Mr. T.

Our lives have been very focused on what colleges he wants to attend, what colleges are good fits, the program offerings, the degree program, what can he take at local community college and scholarships!

Lots and lots of scholarships!

The other night I attended a FAFSA overview at school.

College preparation checklist.

I’m pretty sure I will never be prepared!

Santa brought him a dorm fridge at Christmas.

And he got a small vacuum, lots of tupperware and some command hooks.

Time to get ready for dorm life!

This is a great experience, and if he gets good scholarship money (can we all just pray for this, please?) he’ll most likely be required to live on campus.  And we are excited and ready for this!

But the other day, we were talking, and he goes, “I’ve narrowed my selection down, I want to go here, and I don’t think they have dorms, so I’ll be commuting.”

Okay, not going to lie, I am totally okay if he lives at home while attending college.

But I understand that experience matters – and I want him to have that experience.  I don’t want him to limit himself.  I want him to keep his options open, we haven’t even done FAFSA yet, so we have time.

I imparted to him how I didn’t want him to deny himself the opportunity, to deny the experience.  It was important to me that he do what he wanted, we would figure everything else out.

And – as often as I marvel at this kid – sometimes he actually reminds me that he IS mine after all, and he let me know, that the “experience” didn’t matter, his goal was to go, learn, and do what he needed to do in order to get what he needed to succeed in this world.  That he has been researching and talking to administration and other teachers, and he thinks that he has found the best route to take.  So, we talked about it.

It made sense.

We returned the dorm fridge the other day and got a gift card instead.  And that gift card will be set aside until it is time, and he can decide if he needs a fridge or if there are other supplies he will need for school.

I guess experience is what we make it.