Day 88 - School Story

School Story

Matthew Ryan Fischer

 They were young, oh so very very young and it just seemed like they got younger every single year. Maybe they did, maybe they didn’t. Roy knew it was a simple trick of the mind, but he also knew it was happening. They were young in every way, not just in age.  Age, spirit, maturity, mentality, appearance, clothing, music… the list went on and on and on.  You name it, they were it. Roy knew he was in danger of becoming a grumpy old man, but there was nothing he could do about it. He was only forty, but the irreversible damage was already being done.

Roy questioned daily his choice to go back to college. He was never going to leave if he could help it. College was the best four years of his life. The next decade was spent in poverty, struggling to get a step ahead while the economy, frenemies and coworkers conspired to push him two steps back. He worked with purpose, dedication and resolve. He saw the lazy and the well-connected succeed.  It was enough to drive him insane. Roy decided to go back to school. The media and headhunters were always saying people needed new skills and that the skills of tomorrow would require more work today, so why not get started ASAP?

It started with one class. Extra skills to help with job advancement. Except once he had the skills his job took advantage of them, but the extra pay and advancement never seemed to follow. So they became extra skills to have on a resume. The thing that Roy really discovered was that the classes were fun. Much more fun than the work or the headache of a daily job. So if one class was great, why not two or three or more?

And what Roy kept finding out was that the classes were always better than the job and that the extra skills were not enough to make a sizable dent in his workday. So Roy began to wonder if what he needed was really a different degree. Degrees made people qualified and the job websites kept saying that certain key degrees in certain key fields that were going to solve all the economic woes the under employed had ever known. That was when Roy went after the college experience full force all over again.  If four years had been great, why not have six or eight or more?

Six or eight years of school can get to be very very expensive, even with student loans and reeducation grants. Student loans only need paying back once someone graduated, so Roy didn’t plan on graduating. He was after as many degrees as he could get and was willing to work towards a Masters or a Doctorate if it meant he could keep deferring his student loans.

On some level he knew this was not a plan. He also knew that at some point no matter how many deferments he could get, even with post-graduation economic hardships, he would in fact have to start paying some of this money back. And a decade of education is not a cheap thing. Especially when Roy had no specific career goals in mind once he did actually graduate and did have to actually start making actual money to pay back his actual debt.

Roy also needed money to live while he was still in school. Roy sought out scholarships and grants. He became a T.A. in undergrad classes. He joined the work study program and washed dishes in the cafeteria in his spare time. He became a R.A. to save on his living expenses.

Still, Roy was living a life of poverty and facing only a more extreme case of it in his very near future. So he made the only move that seemed to make sense – he pursued his teaching certification. He had basically only known a life within a school system, so he decided to keep it going and embrace that as his complete and total life style. He could teach and take classes. He could live the dream.

It seemed to be working out and he seemed happy, except for that nagging feeling that everyone around him was getting younger and younger and young. He thought he might have been kept young himself, but that is only a fantasy people tell themselves when they are afraid of death. Existing near young people and even associating with them from time to time is not a fountain of youth. Still, that drawback aside, it beat the alternative with all its pointless busy work and office politics. He was going to get old either way, so why not enjoy it? Roy was going to stay a student until the day he died. He wished them the best of luck collecting all the debt then.