Skip to main content

TIFU by telling my parents I was rejected from my dream school

I’m a high school senior (I am 18 though so if you see my Secret Santa posts no I didn’t lie about my age ;)) My family has always been very poor and I am the youngest of three kids. When my sister went to college, she went to one of the top schools in the country on a huge scholarship but her degree still left my family struggling financially.

I didn’t want to be like my sister. I started working when I was 16 and balanced two jobs with lots of extracurriculars and school. I worked my ass off day and night to save as much money as possible so my parents didn’t have to worry about me.

Now, I applied to three colleges on a fee waiver my school gave me. Early decision has come out for them and... I got in to all three. One of these is my absolute dream school, the same top college my sister went to. The other two are less competitive schools that I mostly applied to as a safety net in case my dream didn’t work out. One of my safety schools gave me almost a full ride worth of scholarship money.

I sat and debated this for a couple weeks. Should I pursue my dream and pay thousands of dollars that I’ve spent years saving up? Or should I take the money they’ve offered me at the safety school and go somewhere I’m not passionate about? I was also worried about what my parents would think. If they knew I got accepted to that school, they would never let me make a sacrifice like that. I know they’d take on any financial burden to let me attend.

So... I kinda did a thing. I told them I was rejected from my absolute top college, let them cry to me about how sorry they were, and then told them I got a really good scholarship to the other school.

They’re really excited for me. They can’t stop bragging to their friends how smart I have to be to get a good amount of money, but I can’t shake this feeling of dread and “I fucked up”-ness. I haven’t made my decision yet to the actual colleges so I can still change my mind but... something in me knows I’ll stick with my original plan.

I guess I’m mostly posting this to get it off my chest somewhere. I hope anyone who reads this far is having a blessed holiday season and a happy new year! Thank you for listening.

TL;DR I told my parents I was rejected from my top choice school (when I was really accepted) so they wouldn’t worry about the financial burden of me attending.

EDIT: Thank you all for the kind replies and advice! It’s appreciated more than I can express. To give some info, I plan on studying Engineering. The Big school in question is top in my state for STEM based subjects and does have good connections and resources for people studying this field. In addition, I’m in love with the area it’s in and can picture a home there better than any college I’ve been to. However, the safety school isn’t a bad school. It’s a nice education and the area is safe. I’m not unhappy with the idea of going there, it’s just not my top choice!

EDIT 2: Some people in the comments have referred to me as “man” and “bro” which is totally fine! But I wanted to maybe add to my story that I’m a teenage girl lol. The big scholarship I earned was for a women in STEM program. Exciting stuff!

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

TIFU by forgetting my purse and attempting to get fuel

Not the craziest story but hey. I'm obligated to say this was a few months ago but I cringe every time I go past the petrol station . My petrol was getting low, not dangerously so but it said 27 miles left, (oftentimes it then suddenly drops to about 16 for example, and then 5 and then 0 very fast) I didnt have my purse on me as I just didn't need it... Picked my daughter up from school and then went on to collect my 2 stepdaughters from across town and then set off for home. En route the gauge went to 7 and then suddenly it was 1 so I stopped at the petrol station near our house. The petrol was on 0 as i pulled up to the pump and that's when I realised I had no money. I left the kids in the car at the pump and went in to talk to the cashier, it wasn't mega busy but there was a queue, I'd heard that they can help you if you can't pay for fuel. Like keeping something of yours as security. It was an elderly man and he basically refused to help. At this point i...
Post a Comment
Read more

TIFU - Don’t do what I did

On Sunday morning Aug. 24th, I awoke to discover a large blind spot in my right eye, which turned out to be what is called wet age-related macular degeneration (AMD). It has resulted in a very significant, permanent loss of vision in that eye. Although I maintain good peripheral vision, whatever I focus on at best is very blurry, and mostly disappears. I can barely make out the large E at the top of the eye chart. If this happens to my left eye I’ll be unable to read or drive. It turns out that I missed the opportunity that I had to prevent this from becoming a serious problem because I failed to report what appeared to be minor changes in my vision. In the weeks prior to August I had noticed that what I knew to be straight lines appeared to my right eye to have a little waviness. I also noticed that the color of my front lawn, which I could see through the window from my recliner,  was subdued, looked almost gray, in my right eye. So I scheduled an eye exam, which revealed the p...
Post a Comment
Read more

TIFU by getting suspended for 2 days by my front office in school.

I (13M) am an African American student at Jeannette junior high who had got suspended for 2 days here. I was in math class minding my business until my teacher had told me to go to the main office, which posed no problem to me. As i went down there, the people of the front office had stopped me and made me get a new ID (yes, we have id's.) so i had asked them if i could maybe do a different alternative and call my mother to let her bring the Id here, even then, the Id isn't that important. So, although i was talking to them in a calm manner and not showing any signs of rebellion, they had threatened to call the police on me without thinking twice before calling my parents. This is where i started getting angry, and even then now the black peers agree that could have been a racially motivated action. They then told me to sit in the office conference room because of that, leading into more anger. They had then called my mother who had came over to the school didn't even let ...
Post a Comment
Read more