Keepsake Award

This award requires a funny or sweet keepsake story that tells something about yourself. Otin tagged me and his story was quite touching and actually reminded me of my own life...but I'm sharing a different story instead.

When I was in high school and applying for college, I was told to not let price effect my decision because I could always get a loan. I went to the most expensive state school in the country and didn't worry about the price because I knew I couldn't afford it anyway. Only half the kids in my graduating class even go to college and I wanted to blow everyone away. I paid for college with private loans because my mother couldn't take out any on my own and those were the only ones I was approved for. Every summer I would check my computer 4 times a day to see if my loan got approved for the next year. I would hope and pray that they would approve me one more year and they did. When college graduation came around it was a much bigger deal for me than it was for any of my peers. Many of my classmates didn't even want to walk int he ceremony because they didn't want to be bothered. Your college commencement ceremony has a whole new meaning when you started out not knowing if you would have the money to finish. There were times when I sat in my apartment not knowing how I was going to pay the rent, waiting for my electric to be shut off, sharing a bag of pretzels with my pet rabbit, and trying to get a ride to work because I didn't have the money for gas that week. If you asked me now I couldn't tell you how I did it. I just did because I had to.

Sometimes you need to borrow from Peter and tell Paul you need a few more weeks...wait, that's not right. Am I supposed to pay Paul back? Damn!

That's my story. Since I'm kind of new on this blog thing I'm not going to make a list of who I'm giving this award to. I'm just going to offer it to any of my 7 followers. If you want it and don't have it, just take it. The only catch is that you need to leave me a comment with a blog that you highly recommend I check out. I think that's fair.