$60,000 a year

When I say a little, I mean a lot. Being a senior in high school, a certain undeniable anxiety is rising in the depths of my cerebral cortex as I think about college. Many pieces of adulthood are coming together as the high school safety net slowly drifts away, one of them being college.
Hyped-up since (not even kidding) 5th grade, college became a seemingly attainable-by-all pedestal of gilded goodness that will be the door-opener for seemingly infinite things I can become afterwards.

hold on

what

?

5th grade, yeah. I remember my elementary school taking part in a program that wanted to make every child college bound. A form of total brainwash if you ask me. It's called "no-excuses university". When I look back at it I laugh, I laugh sardonically at the complete idiocy of this concept. My theory (largely unproven and in dire need of research) is that the 2 to 4 year public post-high school institutions began to suffer financially at/around that time. 2006, or so. Thus, they needed the next few generations to boost up the finances through attendance while at the same time, due to the economy and the federal government's cut to fund education, much of the collegiate revenue had to have a more concrete source. That source is this generation, my generation that will get totaled with student loans without much of a shot at an immediate post college job. With tuition for most schools with a good repertoire reaching the upper 20 to 30 thousand per year, it is inevitable that at some point, the heads of the "spam-your-mailbox-with-college-stuff-hoping-we-can-get-your-money" committee needed that extra revenue and needed to begin the mindset early.
In a little flashback, I remember that my 5th grade room adopted Michigan State University as "our" university. We had a great time looking up what it's all about, the campus, the sports, the Spartans, and even pen-pal'ing with some of MSU's students. Not knowing squat about how a university works, I just moseyed with the flow. I moseyed so hard that the idea of a university/college is engrained into my cerebrum, a hot-iron brand that reminds me that anything other than college after high school is petty and unrealistic and wont result in a job or something that I can live off of.
We were brainwashed and we didn't know any better.
Its an awful idea to start college at such an early age as that because grasping such a concept was folly and widely misunderstood among myself and many of my peers.
College talk does a great job in surmising anything else that I could pursue after high school. It's too late for that, though. Way too late.
Someone somewhere is rolling in the g's that we so painfully hand in when making last month's student loan payment.
And it will only get worse.
By the time today's 1st graders become seniors in 11 years, the average university will cost anywhere between 40-60 THOUSAND dollars give or take the inflation. (data taken form massmutual.com in their estimating college costs section)
60 grand for one year? Take me out. Makes me not want to have kids. Makes me glad Im going to college for 20 grand a year.
60,000... Think about it.