Back to School.....Not for Me

Today I find myself in a pit of depression, I should be going back to school, I want to be back at school, But I can't be. School, costs money; and money is something I just don't have. I live in Ontario. Ontario proudly has the most expensive head price for post-secondary education in the country. The province is great for a lot of things, but not for the wallet of a starving student.

When find a job to finance your education is like winning the lottery or plucking up a four leaf clover, you start to feel this bitter sting of failure. A lot of young adults, try to avoid taking out loans because we've grown up with our parents talking about paying off their loans well into their adult prime. We've grown up schools having out teachers talk about it and we're in the world were we need a post secondary education in order to live above the poverty line. With the baby boomers retiring all of these trades are being opened up but a lot of us can't get the training or apprenticeships because college is financially out of reach. Ontario either needs to create a lot more jobs slated for only young people trying to fund their current college years or find away to rude the cost of tuition.

Scholarships, Grants and Burseries are out there but a lot of them have criteria that leave the average joe in the wind. It often feels as though your crap out of luck unless you are above averagely high intelligence, your entire family is destitute, your Native American or another ethnic minority,  Disabled, Homosexual or in the 1.2% of the university population thats a sports prodigy.  More scholarship options for every day guys should be out there.

Now the military on the other hand, is great. They subsidize education fully or in part to Reservists and Full Service members. However there will always be people that shouldn't be remotely close to the service because it's a bad fit and neither student nor military would benefit from such an arrangement. I've seen to many people join up just so they could find away to afford education, despite hating all things about the military. That should really be avoided.

All in all there is some work that needs to be done or the province is slowly going to be screwed in the next 15 years. It'll either be run in extreme debt from unpaid student loans or have tens of thousands of shortages in all work fields from demanding a higher education for everything, while also making that education substantially harder to come by.

And yes, I'm currently depressed. I see the disappointment in my parents eyes. Hearing about a grandson heading out for his second year of college. A niece thats heading back to university after a year off. Then seeing me, unemployed, uneducated at home. Then taking that frustration out on me because nothing is happening, trying to motivate me while simultaneously sinking me into a further state of depression and self disappointment. Because at 24, I should be done school and be out in the world but I'm right friggen here. I'm not a guy who wants pity, I'd just like people to see that it's hard. Maybe the daughter your frustrated with over not having a job, isn't being lazy but the job market is just that hard and she's working hard. Maybe your son really wants to be in college but he just can't find away in the front door without taking out a loan and putting himself deep into debt before he even starts life.

We are spending what should be the greatest years of our life, stressed and worried that we'll be unemployed, uneducated and on social assistance the rest of our lives because our starting blocks have been flawed.

This is whats been going around in my head with back to school happening for the university and college crowd. Maybe it's my emotions talking, my self-frustration but I needed this out of my system.

-Hutch