Why I Took Out Loans My Freshman Year

Throughout my whole junior and senior year of high school, I told myself, and everyone around me with ears that can hear, that I will NEVER take out a loan for college. I believed them to be demonic and the governments way of keeping you in a financial hole for the rest of your life, which is halfway true. But by the time FAFSA apps rolled around, I started second-guessing how I was about to pay for college.

Thanks to the program I am in, I was blessed with grants to help cover most of my college tuition and fees, but not all. It even looked as if all my grants covered nothing! And I didn't want to put myself or my parents in such a burden my freshman year. So I did the inevitable, and took out two loans. I was so nervous about the thought of me having to take out loans.....that I started breaking out. It was real guys. I even wanted to do a three day fast to make sure this is what God wanted me to do. I didn't get a clear answer, but I felt more peace about taking out the loans than imagining my parents paying for my college degree out of their pocket. Nope.

Many people say things like "If you can't afford it, don't get it" but, who the h#$% has $80,000 just sitting in their bank account to get a degree? Not I.

I began to blame myself for being in this predicament. It was my fault I had to take out loans because I wanted to be stubborn and live on campus, even though I live 30 minutes away. It was my responsibility, not my parents, to find ways to pay for school, since it is my education after all. All these thoughts started flooding in my head about how I should feel sorry for myself and how I was a failure.

But I decided to shut those thoughts up, take out the loans, and deal with the long-term consequences when they arrive. I knew in my heart that it would be wiser for me to decrease the burden on my parents as much as I can.

This may also not be a big deal for everybody else, because it seems like the norm for people to take out loans for school, and worry about them later. But coming from someone who forbade such a thing, I wasn't readyyyyy.

As crazy as this sounds, I felt like a grown woman when I accepted those loans. I had an actual responsibility to take care of. This was my first-step to womanhood (although I say that about a lot of things)!

Hey, I wanted that first-year experience. And now that i'm here i'm going to make the best of it. College is a learning process, and I am learning to make wise and independent decisions.