My community college experience + advice

hey guys what's up welcome back to my channel my name is julia ellie and today i'm going to be talking about something that i've wanted to talk about since i started my youtube channel i'll be talking about my community college experience and and my personal pros and cons of going to community college but mostly i'm just gonna be talking about like my experience going to community college because i know a lot of people do so or a lot of people are thinking about it so this is just like a little video to maybe convince you one way or another or to prepare you for what might occur and stuff but this is all personal so my experience and obviously everyone's is different but before we get started make sure you guys go subscribe and like this video and also comment down below if you like these sit down talking videos and if you wanted me to do more sit down and talking videos with you guys let's just get into it i went to northern virginia community college and i went for two years i got my associate's degree there and i transferred from nova to george mason university so i was there for two years and i went straight from high school to community college so so there were a few reasons why i chose to go to community college and why that ended up for me so the first reason i decided to go to community college is because i didn't really feel i felt like i had to go to community college not community college but it was kind of almost like since i was little that i was going to go to a college nearby that i wasn't going to go to a college like out of state or really far away mostly because just like how my family is and stuff i always kind of knew that i was going to go to college nearby and live at home because my older sister did that she didn't go to community college but she went to a college nearby and commuted and i just kind of always knew that that's what my college experience life was going to be like i would watch movies like it's the american dream or like it's the american story where your kid grows up and they graduate high school and then they go to college and they have some of their lives and stuff and i just knew that that wasn't going to be my experience even from like a younger age might be a cultural thing that that's just like not how my family was but that's just like was something i always kind of knew wasn't gonna be my route the second reason obviously is because of money i i can't even stress enough the amount of money you save once you go to community college over a four-year university i know so many people that went to out-of-state colleges and they paid thousands and thousands of dollars and people are going to be in debt for the rest of their lives because of student loans and that's not to say that i don't have student loans like i definitely have a lot of student loans but i know like looking at my student loans now i would have had way more tens of thousands of dollars more if i didn't go to community college going to community college saved me saved me tens of thousands of dollars and i cannot be more grateful for that because at the end of the day i knew that i was going to be the one paying for my student loans in the future so i just wanted to have the option where i could not pay 80 000 or some crazy number because i went to a four-year university a lot of people have the luxury of their mom and dad paying for all four years or getting a scholarship and i didn't have that luxury i knew that going into college so it was honestly just the best option for me because what a lot of people don't realize is that you save so much money it's insane the amount of money you save going to community college and that was definitely the number one reason why i chose to go there the third reason well this isn't really a reason but this is the reason why i'm glad i went to community college is because in high school i didn't have the highest gpa i didn't really pay attention in school i was always out with my friends like i wasn't really a school person and didn't have a good work ethic in high school like i didn't do my assignments i didn't do all in tests i was just not a good student and going to community college really like changed my entire life i learned time management skills i learned how to be independent and i learned so much going to community college that i don't think i would have been able to learn going to a four-year university it was hard it was definitely really weird and i'll get into this later but it was definitely really weird like going from having all your friends in high school and then graduating and then you don't really have any friends they all go to different schools you know everyone faces that but for me it was different because i was still in the same spot like i was still living at my family's house and i was commuting to school just like high school but all my friends were living in dorms and going to parties and meeting new people and not living with their parents anymore and i was really of course like jealous that i didn't have that but at the same time having that having to go to community college and not being able to party every weekend made me really focus on school and focus on what i wanted to do in life because before like in high school i had no idea what i wanted to do i didn't have a path i didn't know what i wanted i didn't know what my career goals were and going to community college really helped me understand what i wanted as a person and it really helped me be more independent like as a student and as a person as a person as a whole because you have that time that i feel like a lot of people in four-year universities don't have because they're maybe they're partying more have more of a social life which is awesome but i was studying all the time and i was getting my assignments done and my gpa from high school to community college skyrocketed it was so much higher my gpa graduating high school of all four years was 2.8 which is really not the best and my once i finished community college my gpa was a 3.8 so it just like jumped so high and i was so focused i was determined and i started to love school and i never loved school in high school getting that almost like step in between high school and four-year university really helped me at least develop time management skills and responsibility and love for learning again maybe everybody is different and what their community college experience was but that's how i felt and that's how i feel like reliving that um obviously there's like pros and cons to community college one of the biggest cons for me was knowing that all my friends were out you know having the time of their lives meeting new people partying and just doing all this fun stuff and i was still living at home i think the hardest part was knowing that my friends were living by themselves like in their own places and i was still living at home and that was really annoying because i also of course didn't want to live at home but it helped me in the long run because like i said it gave me so much more time to study and focus i didn't have to pay but i didn't have to worry about paying rent or all this stuff and i just could focus on my school work and on myself as a person so even though that's a con honestly it's kind of a pro because i just i got so much out of that time that like in that money that i could have spent on rent and stuff like that and i didn't have to spend it on that i could spend on other things and traveling and like clothes which i love so it honestly so i guess i don't really have a lot of cons one of the other things that i should mention is that people a lot of people think that when you go to know like when you go to community college that you're not smart or that you just don't have good grades and that you just weren't smart enough to get into a four-year college and that's just like not the case at all that's a big misconception that i hated i definitely felt ashamed and embarrassed going to community college at first everybody talks down about it people like oh if you go there you're just dumb and stuff and that's just like not the truth at all like i know so many people that weren't there i met so many smart people and they go most people go to community college because to save money like not everybody is as fortunate as you or your friends so that's something to really think about before you judge people about going to a community college you know but that is something that if you're considering going to community college you're going to have to face you tell people in your high school you go to community college they might make fun of you or be like talk behind your back and be like you're dumb because that definitely happened to me but it's just something you're gonna have to deal with because at the end of the day you're winning in the end because you save all that money and i got a four-year degree and i'm getting my grad degree so who's really winning in the end i don't know but those people who say all those bad things are they just have nothing else to talk about so don't worry about those people another thing is some people think this misconception that uh no that community college is so much easier than a four-year university and i don't think that's the case i think the reason why people think that is because when you go to community college it's the first two years so usually the first two years you're taking like gen eds and you're not taking your super advanced like four level classes you're taking like your 100 intro to communications and like intro to psych and those aren't usually the harder classes so obviously it's going to be easy but at any four year university the first two years are easier than the last two years if you're taking your easier classes and then when you go on your last year it's the hardest like the last two years is the hardest because you're taking those 304 level 400 level classes just like obvious so the people that say that it's easier it's i didn't i don't think it is but i don't know maybe it is to some people but i didn't have a problem at all transitioning from community college to mason four-year university i felt so easy i felt prepared i felt ready and i did really well at george mason and i'm still continuing my studies there i'm getting my grad degree there so i really didn't have any issues adjusting from community college to four-year university it was really easy for me i just think that if you're determined and you're responsible and you want to succeed you will honestly as cliche as that sounds but i didn't have any trouble transferring from community college to a four-year university i think a lot of people think that community college is really easy and it's for people who aren't smart but that's just not true at all i i don't know why that's such a misconception but that's not true at all like i said some of the cons is that people are gonna talk about you probably and maybe make fun of you because they think you're not smart or not smart enough to go to a four-year university or that you're dumb because you go to community college and just like don't listen to those people because it's not true and you know why you're going there and it's the right decision for you as a person everybody has their own path so that's one of the cons is that that might happen another con is that you don't get to live out the normal four-year university life and you don't get to live in a dorm you don't get to join a sorority even though i never would but you don't get to do like those experiences that your friends and your peers might be doing honestly those are the only two cons i can really think of the pros is just like so many pros i'm just like an advocate at this point for community college i think everyone should go to community college but the pros is that you save hella money you save tens of thousands of dollars you have more time to focus on your studies because you don't have to you're not going out and partying every weekend or maybe you are but it's different vibes and for your university and the third thing is that you're not distracted by like having to pay bills and like having paid rent and you can just focus on what you want to do and another reason why it's crazy because if you didn't do so well in high school or if you feel like you need more time a gap you're not ready for the four-year university this is kind of like the bridge to the four university in my opinion it gives you more time to figure out what you want what your major should be and that's where i figured out what my major was so it gave me that time to figure out what i wanted to do and like who i was as a student as an academic so yeah i feel like nova should be sponsoring this video because i'm just hyping them so much but i had a great experience community college i recommend if you are interested to definitely do it and screw what anybody else says because at the end of the day it's your life and it's your decision and i don't regret it at all i'm so happy with my decision and i know that if i had chosen a different route that i might have not done as well in school because you know i know a lot of people that didn't do that well their first year or two of college because they were so distracted with friends and parties and stuff and i didn't have that distraction so i really was able to focus and get my gpa up and focus on school and that's something i'll always appreciate so if you want to go to community college you should i recommend everyone going and saving thousands of dollars but that's just my personal experience everybody has a different experience so yeah so i hope you guys like this video it's kind of really different for me like just talking about my experiences but if you guys like this video please make sure to subscribe and like this video and leave a comment down below if you like this style of videos do you want me to sit down and talk more or do you just want me to shut up and do more like beauty and fashion stuff because if you do that's fine too but thank you guys so much for watching

Channel: Julia Ali

Views: 4,151

Rating: 4.964602 out of 5

Keywords: college, community college, advice, tips, experience

Id: Ov8NDRFwf8w

Length: 12min 36sec (756 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 03 2020