Returning to School Essay

An experience in my life that influences my goals to go back to school is when I went to jail for the first time. Going to jail is an experience that changed my life forever, because it made me think of all the wrong things I was doing with my life. When I got out of jail, I attended church for the first time and asked Jesus Christ to come into my life. After asking Jesus to come into my life, I felt a change within myself and realized I can be a good person and that I am forgiven for the bad things I did in the past. Going back to school and taking my future seriously is what I am focused on right now. I want my children to know that I am doing this for them so they can have a secure future as well. I have 3 young children who look up to me and I do not want to let them down.

My decision to go back to school in the fall of 2012 was one of the hardest decisions I have ever made. I’m a stay at home mom of 4 boys with 2 of them being special needs. My oldest was born with a rare genetic condition called hereditary spastic paraplegia and my youngest son was born with a rare condition called Dravet Syndrome that requires 24/7 care. I was at a point in my life where I had lost my identity of who I was and I wanted to be me again. I made that important decision to go back to school for myself with the fear of how I was going to do it, but I knew that it was right. It took me 3 years to complete my AS but with the support of my husband and kids I was able to receive my degree. I worked hard and was able to juggle being

Adult students applying to college is more common than faculty thinks. Colleges are seeing more adults returning to college to complete a degree that they began when they were younger. The adult student is working longer in life and needs to keep up with their competition which is a younger group and better-qualified. The younger employee is technical savvy and has graduated from college with new ideas to share in the workforce. The research that will be included in this paper will focus on the conceptual framework.

I recently found a list of goals that I had written 20 years ago. Most of the goals were realistic and I was able to achieve them. While I was checking the items off my list that I accomplished, there was one that I have debated about for many years—returning to school to earn a degree. Returning to school has always been achievable; however, as each year of my life sped by and I got older, I always came up with more and more excuses as to why I should not return to school. One day I received a course catalog in the mail showing online classes at the college. I decide that an online class would be the first step to my future. I am so grateful for the first day of that class. All the excuses and delays regarding returning to school

Coming to college as an adult, we have many expectations and preconceptions of what college will or will not be. The expectations we have can influence our college life for the better or the worse. My experience since starting college has been an interesting one. People have misconceptions about college because they do not know what to expect. After doing some research, I have concluded that there are three major factors that are often misunderstood about college life. The first is the financial aspect of college. Second, is the relationship between the professors and students. Third is time management. These three factors play an important role in why people are afraid to go down the path to college.

Returning back to school was a very natural decision for me. It seemed to be the next logical step in my personal and career goals. My ultimate goal is to be happy and healthy and be a good provider and role model. With that set aside for now, my next goal is to be financially stable and able to provide for my family in ways that my family was not able to provide for me. I definitely expect to work for what I want and earn every bit of it. The most recent motivator was that my company was willing to contribute a huge chunk of the yearly tuition, therefore removing some financial burden. This makes me feel like they truly care about my future and they really want to see me succeed.

I do not believe the universe only knocks once, I believe it starts as a whisper and goes round and round till you get it. It is usually the quiet or the unexpected moments you hear it best, though still sometimes you might need several of those moments and a few reminders after that. It was in my most recent semester at school where I heard how imbalanced I truly was, and if I made it my mission to live my life in balance, to relax more and trust more, I will be more.

In early 2006 I was knocked off track. My little brother was killed in a car accident at the age of 17. My world went pretty dark for a while, and I dropped out of college and left my jobs. After a few months of deep grieving, I got on my feet and got a job making more money as a receptionist for a window company. I pushed my passion to the back of my brain and put the money first. I was all determined to have a “grown up job” and be on my own. This meant I couldn’t afford classes, or books. I also had to have a full time day job to afford my rent. Teaching went to the back burner for several years. I was offered higher positions at my job, and pretty soon found myself sitting in the office behind the desk from which I myself was hired. I hated it. I could sit on the computer all day long and do nothing. Most people would’ve loved my job. But I could not handle

The idea of returning to school has always been on my mind since I graduated from PIMA. PIMA helped me realize I can pursue a degree instead of always a certificate. Since I was a little girl, I have struggled with some speech problems and mild case of a learning disability. I was placed in special education for a very long time. I got out of that when I was in my junior year of high school because I believed I was capable of doing things on my own. I know I am a good student. I know I am a hard worker. I have always had a pretty good GPA. Some words that I found hurtful in high school were from some of the paraprofessionals that worked with me throughout those years. I was told that I would never go to a regular four year college because of my struggles. I have kept those lies for so many years inside of my heart and soul. I am ready to prove them wrong and better myself by challenging myself to do it. I have achieved so many things since high school. Academic testing hasn’t always been easy for me but somehow I have moved forward and achieved. When I have taken assessment placement tests at PPCC I have felt discouraged with my

I have many reasons to return to school for bachelors’ program. One of the reasons I returned to school is to advance my career beyond being staff nurse. After I graduated from a two-year community college as an RN, I realized that I have a potential to advance my career from staff nurse to nurse practitioner. When I was in nursing school, I thought I never back to school because nurse school was so stressful. Nursery school was the hardest thing I ever did, I remembered those days.

Coming back to school after being away for 17 years has been one of the most emotionally taxing endeavors I've experienced. My career experience was working in the quality control field. Being apart of the industry was very satisfying until the point in which the 2008 recession hit. Having to go through the uncertainty of being laid off and the frustration of trying to reenter the work force with only a high school diploma brought into focus that I needed to finish the bachelor degree I had started. While attempting to find gainful employment I took the opportunity to begin the process of transferring to a school here in California. I had originally started my degree in Lincoln, Nebraska, but moved out to California with my significant other.

My inspiration to go back to school started almost seven years ago. This is when I started my new job at Kraft Foods. I had no idea what I was getting myself into, and I really did not know exactly what I would be doing. What I did know, was that I would be doing manual labor of some kind. I also did not know what kind of people I would be working with or what they would think of me. I was just happy to have a job after being laid off from my job as an accounting assistant in Long Beach, California. After being out of work for almost six months and the economy being so bad in 2010, I was desperate for a job. I decided to take a minimum wage position making eight dollars an hour. Little did I know at the time, but this job would show me

I contemplated taking a semester off to have my child and reprioritize my life. However, after speaking my faculty mentor, I received the encouragement I needed to pushed forward and complete my degree. Sadly, I made the ultimate decision to postpone my journey to medical school to care for my family. After graduation, I decided to join the workforce to support my family. As a recent college graduate, I experienced difficulties obtaining employment and this was very discouraging, especially since I was caring for two young individuals. Eventually, I obtained a full-time position at a local community college and have been there for about six years educating minds to achieve their educational

A fork in the road only appears as such when both paths are seen as viable options; yet, once one path becomes seen as the only one, the other devolves into a deviation. Where the aberration would require justification to travel down, the perceived correct course would require justification to not travel down. This is precisely how the false question of attending college was presented to me: it was a matter of when not if. Upon inheriting white looking skin, a middle class family, and a pat on the back for bringing home white sheets of papers with little red “A”s written in the top right corner, it was ascertained that I was to be a productive and successful engineer after paying for college with hard-won scholarship money. In short, there were several socio-economic factors that contributed to my eventual position in college.

A shift that tends to cause fear in individuals is that of transitioning from a secondary education and into a post-secondary education due to lack of awareness of what to expect plus having little or no knowledge about how to prepare for such drastic change. First-generation college students constitute those students that are first in their families to go to college, whose parents were unable to achieve any postsecondary education, bachelor 's degree, and had more than a high school education (Garcia, V. 2015; Garriott, P. O., Hudyma, A., Keene, C., & Santiago, D. 2015; Pascarella, E. T., Pierson, C. T., Wolniak, G. C., & Terenzini, P. T. 2004). On the one hand, first-generation college students have a challenging time adapting to the college experience due to not having any academic guidance from their relatives. Whereas second-generation students have the guidance and expertise of a family member in regards to post-secondary education. Thus, it is important to understand, which, among the two, takes an education more seriously, as well as whether the prior attendance of a relative or acquaintance changes the way an individual 's perception of education. Furthermore, the purpose of this study is to examine whether the social economic status and ethnicity play a role in the success rate of first-generation individuals who have no previous knowledge of a post-secondary education.