I know there is no way we will be able to pay for the 3 kids to go to college.
We may be able to pay a small part of the 3 kids college tuition/expenses. But, the 3 kids are within 6 years apart so there will be at least 2 kids in college for 4 years. I know that most parents are smart and do things like space their kids apart by more than 4 years to better be able to pay for college. But, I’d rather live my life an enjoy my kids the way I’d like to enjoy the kids without planning their births around the 20-yrs hence schedule. I love having the kids close in age. I love that they play together and they’re friends.
I’ve always said my kids would need scholarships or they’ll come out of college with huge college loans. But, it dawned on me about 6 months ago that I could not just make a pipe-dream statement but I could help them start working on this at a tender age. There are so many things I can do. I can help them figure out what they want to be. I can give them opportunities to volunteer in those areas or otherwise spend time with people who do those jobs so they can really help sort out if they really like that profession. I know that I was half-way through college and still didn’t know what I really wanted my major to be. But, I think that’s because I really didn’t go to college for what I wanted. I wanted to be a nurse. My father was a guidance counselor so he was very educated about different career fields. But he simplified the job of being a nurse down to “work all night long, clean up poop, get thrown up on, and take orders from doctors.” So, like anyone who was given that description, I abandoned that plan and went to college in a generalized program.
But, I believe it is possible for the kids to make an informed guess about either what they want to do when they grow up or where they want to go to college. We can then research what it takes to get into those places and do things in advance that either help with admissions and/or hopefully to earn scholarships. I’m sure the art of finding out what scholarships exist is a big part of the battle. And, I’m guessing the ones that might be easier to get are the more specialized ones since everyone knows about the generalized ones like merit or sports scholarships.
So, I started asking Matt what he wanted to do. He hated that line of questioning. I asked him questions like “do you want to work inside or outside”? “Do you want to work with people or alone”? “Do you want to want to work on the same thing all the time or have more project-based work? We didn’t make much process on that but somehow he communicated that he wanted to work in healthcare. He had wanted to be a doctor but I told him that it just was not a good plan because of the extended time and extended financial commitment. I told him about the nursing shortage in North Carolina and the programs they had to defer tuition if the graduates worked in NC in nursing for the 2 years immediately following graduation. He LOVED that idea. And, he loved the idea of specialized nursing. He keeps researching these on the Internet and asking me questions. I had no idea there were so many types of specialized nursing.
Now I’m trying to find a good primer book on deciding if nursing is right for you. The books at Amazon all seem to be expensive.
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