For the last few months, I have had a serious debate taking place in my mind. I have talked to friends and family about it and seem to come up with even fewer answers than when I started. I really don’t know what would be best for me: continue with college, or drop out and start working. I feel like a lot of students have this debate during their first year and it isn’t easy. Only one person can make the decision and that is the student. Personally, I have three major reasons I’ve seriously started considering dropping out.

Debt scares me

I have only the faintest understanding of a lot of adult concepts. Student loans are no exception. In my mind, it goes something like “Okay, I can’t afford school because it will cost me over $200,000 by the time I am done therefore I need to borrow money." Then there’s that whole interest thing so when I pay it back, I’ll be paying a total of way more than $200,000. Hmm, no thanks.”

I’ve always been financially responsible, even as a kid. I would save my holiday and birthday money for things I really wanted or needed. Not on impulse purchases of the latest fad. I always avoided asking my parents to borrow money. In fact, they’d often ask me to borrow a few bucks when they didn’t have time to stop at the bank. I only like spending money when I actually have any to spend. Debt does not sit well with me at all. Which is exactly why it is reason #1 why I’ve seriously considered dropping out.

I didn’t want to go to college in the first place

From kindergarten to senior year, I always gave 120 percent in school and maintained a GPA that put me at second in my class. There were a lot of classes that I just understood and didn’t need to put an effort in, but there were a few that I literally cried over trying to get the material. In the end, I did. No one made me do it, but myself and the motivation that I needed to get into a good college… until I realized college was optional. Yes, that’s right, I thought college was just the next step unless you went to a technical trade school rather than high school.

I thought that all the way until my sophomore year when I heard someone say they weren’t going. That shook my entire view. Especially since I just wanted to be a firefighter. Did I really not have to go through more traditional schooling? Could I just get job-specific training? For an entire semester, I was dead-set against going to college. Then my parents and teachers talked to me about the importance of having a plan B. So, back on the college track I hopped, reluctantly.

I hated freshman year

When it got closer to leaving for college, I started to get excited because, hello, freedom. I could be my own person without my parents hovering over me. It could be a new start away from the drama and bullying of my school career so far. Maybe people would be more mature and take school more seriously like I did. After all, they’re paying to be here. Well, I couldn’t be more wrong about any of that (except the freedom thing). I had my first interactions with rich kids who throw money around, I got treated just as poorly as I did in high school by some of my “closest” friends, and I just hated every second of being at school. I felt like I was wasting my time taking classes that basically reviewed everything I already knew from high school. I was paying $50,000 that I didn’t even have for this?

So after all this, have I decided to drop out? No, not yet at least. Why? I’ve already started college. If I don’t walk away with a degree, for the rest of my life, I will feel like a quitter. I will wonder what would have happened if I just finished. I don’t know if I can do that. If I do leave, I’ll pursue job-specific training from a fire academy or a different paramedic program and seek employment. However, I won’t have that plan B everyone told me is so important. Maybe sophomore year will be better. I hear that freshman year is the worst for most people and that everything smoothed out their second year. Which path am I going to take? I still don't know. But at the end of the day, I'll have to live with the choice I make even if it is the wrong one. I will mentally defend my decision, telling myself it was the right one and that it "made all the difference," but what about the road not taken? That, I will never know.