Tuition Payments vs. Life Lessons | Lesson 9
"I'll never marry a waitress."
That's what my boyfriend of several years said to me one night when I asked him where our relationship was going. I was making $90,000 a year serving tables at the Monkey Tree in Yellowknife. He was a drug dealer. And somehow I walked away from that conversation questioning my life choices.
That one comment cost me $140,000.
Not directly. But it started something — a technical diploma from Aurora College, a Bachelor of Science from Royal Roads, an executive MBA from Queen's, and about two decades of tuition payments in between. There were points along that road where I went from six figures to nothing, living on debt, genuinely wondering what I was doing.
So was it worth it? I've thought about it a lot. And the answer has almost nothing to do with what I learned in a classroom.
In this episode:
- The remark that sent me back to school at an age when I'd already written school off — and how "prioritizing the relationship" quietly shaped every academic decision I made for years.
- A hiring freeze, a layoff, a job at half my old salary, a year studying psychology and art in Nanaimo, and going broke. The path was not a line.
- Why I chose the MBA that cost twice as much as the others — on purpose — and what my employer said when I asked them to help pay for it.
Universities teach you the theory. Life teaches you what it actually is. But the thing I really paid $140,000 for wasn't on any syllabus.
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