Interview Paragraph - Extra Credit

Author's Note: This is an extra credit paragraph that I did for my COM 105 class in which I received a 4/5 or an A- letter grade on (at this point I already have a 100% in the class so the extra points will be added to my Research Paper if I need it).

Interview Paragraph

I interviewed a fellow co-worker yesterday named Tariq Atkins, and my main reason for interviewing him is because he and I have some similarities in regards to working full-time while going to school full-time, as well as also having some differences in how this process was approached. Tariq Atkins, like me, has had to work his entire collegiate career, which has consisted of obtaining a Bachelors degree and continuing from there to work on a Masters degree. He has also had to work full-time through the majority of this process too. While he values the advantageous affects this has on one’s character, he does caution against pursuing this path lightly. He stated the major disadvantages to working full-time while going to school full-time as missing out on one of the better parts of your life. He recommends that people take advantage of their collegiate situation by preparing ahead for it, which would entail saving up enough money to help pay for it, get the best grades you can get in high school so you will be able to obtain grants and scholarships easier, taking out as much student loans as you possibly can to survive and pay for college on, and to maybe only work part-time, if needed, during all of this. His reasons for this are simple, you are only young once, and college is the time in your life when you can still enjoy a certain amount of things while also learning to be responsible and working towards the type of life you want to have in the future, and sometimes missing this can leave one lacking certain experiences that may or may not be needed down the road. He listed some other disadvantages as well to taking the path that he has to get through school, such as working jobs you do not necessarily like, building up a level of cynicism that may not necessarily be all that positive or healthy, plus having to juggle a tight schedule and learning and accepting that some things are just going to have to be sacrificed, most of all a social life, and a combination of less study time and less time to sleep depending on how you arrange your schedule. In the end, it is hard for him to say whether he would do anything differently if he had to do it all over again. Part of the thing that helped him was that he was a reservist in the Army, which allowed him some of the funds that helped him on obtaining his Bachelors, but then a year and a half into his two year contract he was injured and honorably discharged and lost a lot of the funding and other help he had received previously. He also chose the path he did mainly because he did not want to create a lot of debt that he would have to deal with later in life, as opposed to having more of a social life and a better schedule with a substantial more amount of debt to tackle in the future. Tariq also had no real set definitive direction on where he wanted to go or achieve during his collegiate career, so paying his way as he went allowed him to focus more on what he wanted to do and narrow it down and also allowed him to take breaks here and there while deciding this, which in the long run would have hurt him more if he had taken out more student loans and other financial aid. Also, while this took him longer to obtain his degrees, the extra time did help him in eventually deciding the path he wanted to take in his collegiate career, and now he has a solid direction that he is secure in and knows he will not waver from. Taking all of what Tariq has said to me in account, it would appear that there are some advantages and disadvantages to working full-time while going to school full-time, but I know, just like him, that my decision to do so was the best decision that I have ever made and I know I am set in my goals and will not waver, and look forward to when I have obtained the degrees that I desperately seek.