Fairmont State University

Now, before everyone starts asking me why, let me explain.

I'm not hating on college because, despite having a ton of bad experiences, I had some good ones, too! I met a lot of nice people that shared my interests, I can now look at a painting and tell what kind of brush strokes they used, and I now know how to mold clay into cups and bowls to make pottery. The art classes I took were definitely wonderful, but those are sadly the only few good things that I can name off.

Alright, so here is why I did it:

●Financial Failures
-I can proudly say that in my 3 years of attending college I kept a GPA of 3.5-3.8 the whole ride through, but that didn't help me financially like it helped a lot of others. There had been times where I was awarded The WV Higher Education Grant, the Pell grant, and a few other small grants, but never saw them after my 2nd semester. I went to college for at least 4 semesters without financial aid and when books can accumulate up to $500-$900, that's a big deal. Do you know how awful it feels to ask for help to pay for books that we "need" but never even use them? I don't know how many times that has happened. I have lost over $6000 dollars of my own/family's money due to not receiving financial aid when I was supposed to and I couldn't take it anymore.

●Advisor horror stories
-To sum things up, in the past 3 years, I WAS NOT ASSIGNED AN ADVISOR. I even requested several times to have me assigned to one, but they kept tossing me back and forth between other advisors who did not have my information at hand. I've been told by one advisor that I "need THIS class", and the other one would say "no, you need THIS class" and then I would have to figure it out on my own through trial and error.

●Scheduling Disasters!
-This was probably the biggest problem I had. Notice that I've started each paragraph with "in the past 3 years" well, for your information, I was only expecting to go for 2. Associate's degree, that's all I wanted, but nope! I started out as two year, but as I was moments away from graduating I was "missing" a class, and that class was Communication. Ah, just one class, I can go an extra semester and take some extra art classes to fill up my hourly quota for some financial aid. That should work out! Haha, no. First of all I wasn't awarded financial aid like I stated earlier, and once I had completed the communication class and was, again, seconds from graduation registration, I was (GASP) missing more classes! Not one, but two more! I was missing two classes that none of my advisors had told me about and were unlisted in my major's class requirements. Odd, huh? So, I AGAIN went another full semester with classes that I really didn't need just so I could have credit, but after a few months (the beginning of this year) I checked my credits and I was, I shit you not, missing 4 class credits, and two of them were supposed to be voided since I had done two internships with mentors (which should have counted as class credit). Suddenly, my mentor internships weren't there. After talking with at least 11 different student counselors, they all told me that I could graduate in 2015. That means it would have taken me 5 years to have enough credit for a 2 year. That was it. I knew I was done.