I was thinking about my life the other day, as I tend to do, and those thoughts lead me into thoughts about school, as they usually do, since school is not only a huge part of my life right now, but it's also the most stressful. I love being in college though. The smell and mystery of new textbooks that I know I will understand after the semester, the win of getting good grades and how successful I feel after a particularly good study binge. I love learning, I always have and I always will.

What I don't like is waking up every morning knowing that although the government won't let me imbibe alcohol, they do let me grow farther, and farther, and farther in debt. I'm not old enough to drink, but dammit I'm plenty old enough to stall my future by taking out thousands of dollars in loans just to further my education.

My parents struggled with their own finances all throughout my childhood, so there was never any chance in them paying for my college education, and it's better that way. I'm glad that it was left up to me to pay for my future because I learned incredibly valuable lessons that I'm not sure would have stuck with me had I been given my education for free. I have failed several times, and I learned what I was doing wrong and how to fix it. I also believe that having to personally invest in my future makes it more tangible and worthwhile to me.

Don't get me wrong, this country has some serious issues with educating it's future, and make no mistake, we students, and all the students after us are it's future. We as a country lag behind the entire world in high school education standards, yet don't pay our teachers a decent living wage. Our nation's capital has the worst school district in the country.  I once had my 6th grade teacher tell me "if you don't know the answer, just guess 'C'". How about you tell me the answer, or better yet teach me how to discover it myself, instead of teaching me how to have a 1/4 chance at getting it right? Of course we also have some of the best colleges and universities in the world, so if you can manage to graduate the hellhole of high school with good enough grades (a C average..) you can try to get into college. Chances are that because of our culture you will go bat-shit crazy being so close to all the kegs, and you also won't have any study habits because American high schools don't teach you that. So once you sell your soul for thousands in student loans that you will have to pay back plus interest in a few years, you fail. You end up having to go to school an extra year or so because you weren't taught how to be a good student. That is, if you don't drop out.

That's a pretty fucked up system if you ask me.

Is there anything better out there? Sure, other countries have proven it with their consistently better-than-ours college graduation rate.

So here I am, thinking about how I won't even graduate with a bachelor's degree until 2014, (I graduated high school in 2009), and I will spend damn near the rest of my adult life paying money back to the government for making our country a better place. Because that's what educated people do. They do the research before they vote, they are doctors and lawyers, they are judges and presidents. They are scientists and authors and soldiers and reporters.

Now, whether or not I will be employed when I graduate.... that's another story.