A.M.D.G.
Gabrielle Ruane
1/21/2015
Econ 202-Jorgensen
The Decision of a Lifetime When you are about to graduate high school, you have to start making decisions that matter. You have to be mature and rational in your decision making. Especially when it comes to one of the most important decisions in your young adult life, where to go to college. For some the answer is easy, such as going to your parent’s alma mater or the school that offered you a scholarship. On the other hand, you have people that need to consider multiple factors in their college decision, like me. There were so many confounding variables that made this decision very difficult. I was able to narrow my decisions to Saint Mary’s College of California and Gonzaga University. Now I had to weigh the pros and cons of each school to bring me to my final decision. One of the factors in my decision was distance, I wanted to be close to home, but this was hard for me because I also knew that in order for to grow and branch out I needed to be further away from home. I was trying to think about how hard it would be to be away from my parents, but that was hard for me to imagine at the time. When it came to distance, Saint Mary’s was the easy choice only because I lived in Lafayette, which is a fifteen minute drive from Saint Mary’s. Another factor was tuition and financial aid. When I applied to Gonzaga, I knew that their tuition was on the more expensive side, but I was hopeful that I would receive enough financial aid to put Gonzaga on my pro list. Saint Mary’s I also knew was pricey, but I was also hoping that financial aid would help. When I received the financial aid packages from both schools, I was surprised because Gonzaga gave me a considerable amount of financial aid while Saint Mary’s did not. This was a pro for Gonzaga. Another factor as well was the size of the school and this was very important because I college is a whole new environment, in which there more people in general. Compared to most colleges though, Gonzaga and Saint Mary’s are generally the same size. So I when it came to class size, I really did not mind either college. Both colleges made the pro list when it came to size because they were not too big or too small. These were the most important factors in my college decision. I wanted to analyze how I was making my decision with the steps we talked about in class, starting with freedom. When it came to choosing between these two colleges, I did have the power, ability, and the willingness to choose. I thought it was interesting how you said to exercise the power of freedom, you need a conscious. I did have the freedom to choose between these two amazing colleges and it was based on what I wanted, not someone else. The second item on the list was liberty. Liberty refers to the amount or number of choices you have to choose from. Well in the beginning of the application process, I had about ten choices and after going through and ticking off the ones I just knew would not work for me, I then had the two liberties essentially. These liberties or choices were tough because they were almost identical. I felt better about these two choices only because I knew either way, I would be making a choice that I would support. This is where freedom and liberty come together, I could choose whichever school I wanted to because they were the choices I had and also I had the freedom to choose either one. The third part of a decision has to do with scarcity. Whatever decision I made, I could have made the right or wrong decision when it comes to my future. Scarcity is essentially the absolute limit on liberty. I like how we were talking about McJagger and how his lyrics talked about the difficulties of making a decision. One of his lines was “you can’t always get what you want.” I believe that this applies to everyday life even with everyday decisions that happen throughout your day. Especially when it came to choosing the college I would