School’s Out – Where’s my gorram cheese?

I apologize for the long wait between posts. I’ve been dealing with a little extra stress in my life and took the appropriate break to try and sort some of it out. Hope you’ve all been well and that the forthcoming content appeases your appetites. As always, I look forward to hearing from all of you.

My spring semester recently ended, a little more than recently now, but when I started writing this it had been recently. I met with an academic advisor at IUPUI to discuss my diploma requirements and discovered that I had 59+ credits to complete before I could graduate. That’s all well and good, except that I’ve been going to school part-time since 2008 and to be honest I’m tired of it. When I moved to Indianapolis, I transferred from IU Kokomo where I was about a year from graduating. It just goes to show some of the absurd policies of colleges. Why my credits wouldn’t transfer to the same school, albeit a different campus, is very simply beyond me.

Out of curiosity, I contacted IU Kokomo and met with an advisor there. Through their helpfulness, I discovered that I could definitely swing graduation in within 24 credits and they were willing to accept the credits I took at IUPUI.

I could technically graduate in December. IF(big if) I quit my job at the end of June and bust the coursework out. However, Laura is also doing an unpaid practicum this fall and we certainly cannot afford for us both to be unemployed. There’s an even bigger catch, almost none of the classes are available to me at a reasonable time for the gainfully employed. What an impossible situation!

I am left to choose between my job and my degree. I can *maybe* squeeze one more part-time semester before I run out of scheduling options that allow me to continue pursuing my degree while employed. However, even then one of the classes I need for graduation is only offered in the Fall semesters and only scheduled at the unemployable time of 11:30am-12:45pm, Tuesdays and Thursdays.

What would you do?

I have a great job with decent pay. It’s certainly not the last station I want to hold. How do you make a choice like that? It would be different if I really hated education or truly despised my job. I, however, enjoy them both. Not to mention, the incredible financial impact of being unemployed for even 5 months. Laura and I were just married last September and we are still slightly recovering from that expense.

So where’s my gorram cheese? Which path is right path? I honestly don’t know. The thought of never finishing my degree disgusts me. I have worked too long and too hard, for far too many years to just quit now. But, how would we live? How would Laura and I pay our bills?

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