How was your move to Hawaii?

Question

Please share your experience especially if your in college. Was it tough making it and any advice you could give there's 10 points in it for you!

Answer 1

Umm... I'm not going to college in Hawaii. It's probably going to be Fresno, Auckland, or Vancouver!

Answer 2

I was really lucky. I had a fellowship that paid for my airfare, dorm room, health insurance, tuition, textbooks, and a small monthly stipend. I didn't have a car, I didn't have furniture, I didn't have much of anything, including worries. I had been living in Taiwan for two years, and I didn't have much culture shock, either, though I was living in an international community and hanging out with people from all over the world: Bhutan and Tuvalu, even!

When that degree was pau (finished), and I started another, though, I ended up semi-homeless, really. I had several long-term pet-sitting gigs, but did have to spend three weeks sleeping on the living room floor of somebody that had come to this country as a refugee! I hate to think what would have happened to me if I had been broke and didn't have plenty friends to take care of me and a plane ticket home.

I contrast that with my undergraduate years, spent on a mountain top in Tennessee. I love Hawaii, but I would have hated being an undergraduate at just about any college here. There are many, many colleges that offer a more rigorous education at a cheaper cost of living and more generous financial aid packages in North America. And when you go to college in a place where the rent is low, you get a really vibrant music scene, like Athens, Georgia in the 70s and 80s.

I knew some undergraduates at the biggest university in the state who told me, "We don't buy the T-shirts because we don't want people to know where we go to college." And the worst part of it is, when hiring people, even many local people would prefer to hire somebody who graduated from a university "on the mainland" than one around here. Such graduates are likely to be offered bigger salary and benefit packages to relocate than would be offered to graduates of local colleges and universities, who will take a lower salary in order to stay.

Except for teaching. Only Special Education teachers in Hawaii are offered any kind of relocation bonus. And strangely, degrees in subjects they aren't teaching don't boost teachers' salaries at all. It's almost like the Department of Education doesn't value education for its own sake. Keep in mind, that's the same department that funds all the state-run colleges and universities in Hawaii!

On the other hand, there are things you can learn from your classmates in Hawaii that you can't learn anywhere else. I wrote a paper on Maori culture, gave it to my Maori friend to read, and she told me exactly what kind of cow excrement it was. You can't buy that kind of education!