Education…Privilege or Right?
Laws dictate that children have the right to obtain an education. However, once you reach the college level education becomes a privilege not a right. Fresh out of high school I attempted college the first time at Eastern Oregon State College in LaGrande, Oregon. I say attempted because I failed miserably. Freedom from the rules of my parents I dove head first into the social life of college. At the time, I did not yet know how to balance fun with work. After my freshman year my grades were so poor that I could not get any scholarships, therefore, I would have to pay my own way. I could not afford to do this and neither could my family. Thus ended my short college career, or so I thought at the time.
A college education was an entitlement I had earned, right? As a young student, my teachers and mother told me that if I did well in school I could go to college. I worked hard, did well in school, and earned the right to go to college. What I did not understand is that I had earned the privilege not the right to attend college. I had to fall from my entitled pedestal to begin the journey that would teach me the valuable lesson of education being a privilege not a right.
Once I recovered from the shame of dropping out of college I went to work. I worked hard at a couple of different jobs for the next thirteen years. During that time, I married my long-time boyfriend, Phillip, who I had met while in college. He encouraged me over the years to return to school. I had more excuses for not going back to school than all my toes and fingers combined. Then in April of 2006 the best reason for going back to school presented herself early one Easter Sunday, we named her Meghan Adelaide. As I looked into her angelic face for the first time, I realized that I could not encourage her to partake of the privilege of a higher education if I did not have one myself. I also realized in that moment that I was now responsible for the well-being of someone besides myself. My husband is active duty military, in today’s time of wars, there is always the possiblility that we will send him off to war and he would perish. Should that happen, without a college education, I would have a difficult time supporting my daughter let alone myself.
To my husband’s relief I finally realized the importance of a college education, however, to his dismay with the addition of our daughter to our little family we would not be able to afford the education I now desired. Then this summer when Congress passed legislation allowing military members to transfer their GI Bill to dependents prayers were answered. Since my husband has already earned his bachelors and graduate degrees and we have already started a college fund for our daughter, he decided to transfer his GI Bill to me.
I left the halls of my high school with a sense of entitlement; I felt that I had the right to a college education. After failing at college the first time, I worked hard and gained a higher level of maturity. Now new legislation has handed me a college education on a silver platter. Only now, I enter the halls of college with the realization that the silver platter containing my education is a privilege earned on the backs of the sacrifice given by millions of young men and women who serve my country to maintain my freedoms. This silver platter comes from the sacrifices made by my husband. My college education is a fountain running fresh and freely, a fountain that I am privileged to drink.
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