- I paid for Columbia University using my grandfather’s faith fund decided for me.
- Sometimes I wonder if this was a smart decision and I wish I could spend the money on a payment.
- When I went to postgraduate school, I had no money left, so I brought out student loans.
Most people choose a college based on aspects such as location, athletics, or, most importantly, finances. For me, it was architecture.
Not that I wanted to study it – the closest I ever came was an introductory study of art history. But when I stayed in the Sundial in the center of the campus of Columbia University, between the high columns of the Butler Library and the wide steps of the stone leading to the graceful dome of the lower library, I felt a retreat.
That was the place, I told my mother, who was on a camp on the campus with me. I applied for early admission – a single college application – and I never looked back.
I had the privilege of baseing my college decision in some buildings because I was a child of the Fund of Faith.
I have spent my trust fund in Colombia
I had a funding fund, which my grandfather had set for me shortly after I was born. He was a submarine captain of World War II, an engineering professor and an alum Columbia.
He would invest wisely, modestly passed, and set aside a lot of abundant for each of his grandchildren. I had $ 120,000 in the bank, which, in 1998, was enough to cover education for four years in every private college. It was a very inconceivable money for me.
Columbia destroyed my faith fund in four giant Gulps with $ 24,974 a year. I also had to pay a large sum for a study program abroad in my new year, which almost completely emptied my faith fund.
I wonder if my faith fund could have been best used
Is there advantages in an Ivy League degree? Absolutely. There is no doubt that the prestige of an Ivy League school can open many doors for most students.
If I had placed my heart at Harvard Medical School, Yale Law School or a Rhodo Scholarship, I would have greatly increased my chances of turning that dream into a reality. But like many children of privilege, I had a misty purpose, Artsy – becoming a writer. And to be honest, I could have pursued that purpose everywhere.
It seems impossible that my career would have been very different if, on the contrary, I had participated in the University of Oregon’s College of Honors along with a similar selective group of smart, ambitious children.
The difference would have left tens of thousands of dollars in my faith fund, which I could have used to make a home payment, buy a car, attend a master’s degree – maybe all of the above.
If I were less shaky by architecture, maybe I would have made a more pragmatic decision that would come to me for a more stable financial future.
I got into the student loan debt anyway
A couple of years after graduation, I brought out a very modest amount of loan for graduate school. In the following years, I made with love minimum payments every month (with postponement while I was on maternity leave.) It took almost 20 years to pay my student loan debt.
It would be good to avoid donating all that money for salie mae – or to be sitting on a stone stone somewhere in Brooklyn.
I do not regret any of the classes I received in Colombia. But while almost all of my faith fund entered Colombia’s cash registers, I managed to do some other things with money before it was over – and it was these expenses I never doubted.
I took my girlfriend by getting her back to Europe a summer and paid the medical fees for some children with whom I worked as a volunteer while studying abroad. A child needed heart surgery. After all, things with the most sustainable value were no longer prestigious or expensive. I would like to understand it earlier.