Paying for School
Tertiary education has become our rite of passage in many ways. Whereas various traditions mark adulthood with biological milestones, now we tend to acknowledge the struggle of intellectual milestones instead. Not to mention the fact that individuals worldwide don’t leave the nest right after their Quinceañera or Bar Mitzvah, but usually somewhere after school.
We leave when we can “fend for ourselves” and in this economy, that usually means after college or trade school. I began my studies in English. One year after graduating high school in Calgary, AB, I started what would be a four semester stint at Mount Royal University followed by two more with Athabasca.
My first novel, Habit, actually began as a study in class after a friend of mine tried to quit smoking through hypnosis. But that short story wouldn’t pay the bills, so I took on three jobs at one point just to keep comfortable.
In order to knock down debt, I recommend working long hours for good pay. I’ve always used student loans, but the key is to take big bites out of them whenever you can. As I head towards flight school in 2024, it looks like I’m going to have to work far more hours to afford my new dream.
Paying for education by finding your dream job is the same as paying with the usefulness of the knowledge you acquire. For example, even though I’ve had multiple high paying tutoring jobs and dozens of writing gigs, Writing is a saturated market. Now that AI can nearly match human writing, I’m even more happy I didn’t pay for more courses. Not when I’d learned the practical skills already. Now, I need to prioritize Staying Relevant.
That’s one point I wanted to make by writing this, you are going to pay for the education you deserve. If you buy a degree that doesn’t fulfill you because you took some bad advice or got distracted by a paycheck, you’ll suffer. If you buy one that brings you happiness and recompense, then you’re set. If you buy a degree where there is no market for your skills or you do not qualify for the career of your dreams, guess what? There’s still time.
Do right by yourself by researching, planning, and achieving your goals for education. You can look at me for inspiration. I’m 31, in ground school to become a commercial pilot.
I began this journey knowing I wanted to get paid to travel to beautiful places and I researched the types of contracts I could have. It looks like I’ll need to be a charter pilot, possibly with my own plane. I'll need to stay healthy and receive regular check ups to qualify for my yearly medical. I’ll need to study a certain number of hours on the ground, pass two written tests, then fly for 200 hours across the continent and pass even more tests. Then I need to work hard for 4000 hours before I can even look at a turbojet and voila, my dream begins.
I’ll still need to work diligently every day of my career to stay safe and reach my destination.
Remember, your plan begins where your dream does, but the dream dies when the plan does.
It’s so important to research, plan, and achieve your goals incrementally, not only so you can ensure you’re on track, but so you can learn how to take a vision and make it a reality step by step. School does that. It takes a set of knowledge and develops your understanding bit by byte.
If you value your education, pay for it. If you don’t, quit. I never regret finishing my English degree because I studied all the fiction, poetry, writing, and editing I desired. You can find out more about my University experience here.
Now, however, I am willing to pay $85 000 to change educational direction in my thirties because best case scenario, I get fifty five years to fly. That is worth far more than what it costs to cruise the clouds.
I wish all of you the best in your endeavors and as always,
Keep Writing!
-Kass
