So far I’ve went over how Running Start made me a smarter person, but I haven’t really talked about anything else than brains smart. What about other things like work ethic or responsibility? Surely, if I managed to complete my Associate degree of Science at 18, I must’ve had some work ethic or some crap like that.

Well, I’ll first start off with this: getting into the program was the final tipping point for me moving out of my mom and dad’s house. I had been dating my girlfriend for around three years up until that point, and I was always at her house for those three years. I ate there, I showered there, and I even had my clothes there. But I would go home to sleep, which led to me waking up, eating cereal, and riding my bike over to my girlfriend’s house. Even on school days, I did this same routine! To get to school, I would just take her bus with her instead of taking the bus that came to my neighborhood.

I “lived” at my mom’s house nonetheless because I was 16 and still my parents’ son. But there were things about “living” with my parents that pissed me off. For example, my mom was strict with my curfew: one time my girlfriend came over with her mom, so her mom could ask if we could go to a local baseball game that would make me come home around 10:00 PM or 11:00 PM. My mom said no.

I kept on pushing back against my curfew though. I think it was initially something like 6:00 PM, but I kept on pushing over the years to get it to 9:00 PM. But having to worry about things like coming home at the right time and not being able to do cool stuff like going to Chicago because it was too far away made me angry. But I lived with it. I put my foot down once I got accepted into the Running Start program though.

The Running Start program had a crap load of responsibility attached to it, responsibility that only someone mature could handle. Heck, even getting into the program showed some responsibility. Yet my mom was still going to treat me like a kid. I asked if I could go on a weekend vacation with my girlfriend, her mom, and her mom’s boyfriend, but my mom wouldn’t let me. Why my mom wouldn’t treat me as an adult at that point was the reason I left her house when I was 16.

I’d like to add though that even though I’m bitching and moaning a lot, my mom was still supportive of me financially when I was in the program even though I abruptly left her house one day to move in with my girlfriend. She paid for my books, she let me borrow her car, and she paid for the gas and insurance on the car. So I know she’s always had what she thought were my best interests, and she was crucial for me getting through the program. But I knew in my heart that my best interests would be not worrying about curfews, wasting time going back “home”, and other things like that.

Although my mom might’ve alleviated a big part of going to college (the financial aspect) and I was living with my girlfriend and her mom, I still had responsibilities that many high school students didn’t have. I had the responsibility of making sure I didn’t get too carried away by the Freshman 15 (my school had a Papa Johns and Subway, which I never ate at). I had the responsibility of making a lunch everyday if I needed one, waking up at a good time, driving half-an-hour away to get to school (and not crashing), not leaving class just because I could, and studying when I needed to. I had a lot of responsibilities as a sixteen year old.

One responsibility in particular differed from high school: studying. In college, I didn’t have school every weekday some semesters, and on those days, I only had a few hours of school. So this gave me a lot of free time compared to high schoolers. But that time was expected to be put into studying, reading materials, and doing homework. But many of the Running Starters who dropped the program were treating it like high school where they wouldn’t go all out in doing all of this stuff. In high school, they could get by on their smarts and maybe do some reading and do some studying, but in college, this wouldn’t work for them. So it was up to me to make sure that I didn’t just play video games on my free time off and that  I was actually being productive. Fun Fact: one month I didn’t play video games for weeks!

All of these responsibilities along with moving out of my parents’ house inched me much closer towards adulthood than a lot of people at my age. This has affected the way I’ve adjusted down here in Florida, where I have a condo, because the change was so slight to me. I was already used to my parents not being in my house, I was already used to making food for myself a lot, and I was used to driving to school by myself. Luckily, having down the adulthood junk has made me able to focus more on the school side of going to school.

Earlier, I made a post about the Pros and Cons of doing Running Start. These were before I did the program though. I have a different perspective on the benefits and advantages of doing the program now that I’ve finished it and seen some of the actual rewards.

Pros

• Getting out of high school. I liked high school, and I liked a lot of people there, but the respect from teachers at college and having classes that were respectful to the teachers were some things I loved.
• The freedom of not having to ask the teacher if you could take a pee pee break and other stuff was liberating.
• Knowledge! Me brain was full of dat after finishing da Running Start program, ya feel?
• The badass ranking that comes with an Associate degree of Science. And all the savings of not having to pay for tuition!
• Awesome teachers. Seriously, the teachers at RVC were fantastic. I had one bad teacher and two ok teachers, but every other teacher was either good, great, or fantastic. The teachers there loved to teach, and I could see it. (I’m not saying that my high school teachers weren’t the same though.)
• I got to choose from classes that were not available at my high school. A bunch. Philosophy classes and programming classes are essential for who, and where, I am, and I’m so glad I had the chance to take them.

Cons

• Only one of my credits transferred to my game dev degree: Composition I. This is due to Full Sail’s nature though.
  • Saved $3250 though!
• Drifting away from people I knew at high school.
  • This wasn’t too bad though. If Running Start made me not as close to anyone, moving down to Florida for Full Sail would’ve done the same thing.

Any of the cons, which weren’t many, were so minimal I gave a total of negative five-million six-hundred sixty-six-thousand fifty-two flying fucks about them. Now, something I do give fucks about are the pros. I’m not the same person anymore because of Running Start, and I’m glad. Having done Running Start has made many things easier, especially in regards to Full Sail. One of those things was getting my tuition bill down a bit. But shit, I’m getting ahead of myself. I didn’t even know about Full Sail until towards the end of Running Start; I had actually planned on going to some tech school in Illinois. Obviously, you know the decision I made, but the decisions before that and the thought process should also be known.