14 Important Life Lessons You Only Learn By Accident

8. Student Loans Aren't The Only Way To Pay For College

One more thing about college: there are ways to pay for it beyond selling your soul to the government. We should know this, and it should be taught to us. But for whatever reason, few bother to properly educate the masses on how to balance student loans with scholarships. Unless you go out and actively seek other methods and research these scholarships, you're going to be paying interest on student loans for years after finishing school (much longer, too, if your career is suffering). One of the main reasons we don't learn this until after the fact is because most scholarships aren't advertised. Spots are limited, so only the people who go looking for them will chance upon an opportunity to save money. Another big reason is that many of us assume that the only scholarships that are worthwhile have to be free rides, and we fail to seek out any that will alleviate the debt we put ourselves into with student loans. Alas, the younger versions of ourselves end up overlooking the values of frugality and graduating without a pile of debt on our shoulders.