How to recover from a bad first year experience in college?
I went to a specialized Art University fresh out of High-school and am just finishing the first year up. I've been having a bad experience with the school not helping me with any financial or academic issues the whole time.
At first I had a little trouble getting loans to cover the cost of tuition that wasn't covered by federal Stafford loans. They didn't help me with any other kind of financial aid or scholarships (I understand that I could do the scholarships myself, though... ) Six months ago they forced me to withdraw from the school because I was not able to get a co-signer for my Private Student Loan. Now I'm still not able to get my loan, but they said that I would be able to take 2 classes and still be covered just by the Stafford loan. So here I am taking two classes just so I can defer my loans because I can't afford to pay my loans with a part time job.
Anyway, my REAL problem is that I HATE the school so much. I'm $26,000 in debt from just one year and its not even the kind of school I want to go to. My grades even suffered because of it. I was stupid when I chose that school and didn't know it was going to cost me a fortune to go to. I still want to go to college for a better education, but I believe I want to work with computers, computer science or software programming because that's what I was interested in when I was in High-school. I would also like to move to Colorado (from Pennsylvania) to get a fresh start and be able to concentrate more on my education. What should I do in this situation and how can I recover from taking a huge blow financially, from a school which I probably can't even transfer any credits from? What are some things I can do to get some more help with planing my education and finding ways to pay for it?
Sorry it is so long, but I wanted to be as detailed as I could. If you have any questions, just ask and I'll try to respond quickly.