To our proud grads — it'll be OK

As 1984 came to a close, it turned out that George Orwell’s Big Brother had not taken over the nation. I was a junior at Longwood High School, in Suffolk County, and, still free to determine my fate, I decided what I wanted to be when I grew up — a journalist. I can’t fathom why I loved –– and still love –– to write. I just do.

So, when I reached senior year, I applied to the Newhouse School of Journalism at Syracuse University. On a campus tour, the Newhouse guide filled my head with wild-eyed dreams of studying in London during my junior year of college. With a 20 percent acceptance rate to the school, though, I wondered whether I’d get in.

I was thrilled when I was admitted. Then reality sank in. I had to figure out how to pay for this very expensive school. Back then, tuition, room and board at a private university ran $16,000 a year, which was an enormous sum for a middle-class family. It still is. After factoring in scholarships, student loans and a generous “family contribution,” I came up short.

My dad, a special-education music teacher, had recently had a triple bypass that saved his life, but the operation left my parents with a pile of co-payments. My dad kept working, even though he could have retired. My mom, an art teacher, worked three jobs. They wanted to make sure that my brother and I could go to college. Through them, I learned what a parent’s love means.

They could have taken out loans to cover the shortfall, but I couldn’t ask them to do that, so I opted for significantly-less-expensive Geneseo, the State University of New York’s “public ivy,” set amid the rolling hills of western New York. I intended to transfer to Syracuse in my junior year, but I never did.