My four-and-a-half year ride through college, financially, consisted of both my dad’s hand gripping the back of my bicycle seat and my mom holding onto one of my handlebars. While I moved out of my family’s suburban Orlando house and onto my large university’s campus, I was only seven miles away and visited home at least weekly for my dad’s asparagus and pine nut pasta. While I did my own laundry, I did it at home in a twenty-first century front-loading machine without quarters. And when it came to my finances, I was very laissez-faire: my parents not only funded everything (except my car’s gas and the occasional night out, for your information) but they kept track of everything that needed to be paid for: my tuition, my sorority bills, car insurance, cell phone bill, etc. My tuition and textbooks were taken care of, however, by the Florida Prepaid College Program and by a scholarship I received in high school.

The only time I interacted with money-related acronyms in high school and college was when I was recently hired for a new job, which occurred about once a year since I was 16. When eagerly filling out the preliminary paperwork, any and all forms with a bold W or I on the top instantly turned my eagerness into a bowl of mashed potatoes. But I luckily recalled my dad telling me upon getting my first job to put a “1” at the bottom, and I was OK.

Needless to say, I still have much to learn about being financially independent. I need to be tutored in all that’s involved in paying for grad school, finding my own health insurance, saving for my retirement…the mashed potatoes feeling is coming on again. I currently have a part-time job to return to in Orlando in the fall, and am actively seeking that first full-time job for when I’ll be an alumna in January. I just have to remember “1” for when that next first day comes.

Nicole Willis is a fifth-year, "super senior" at the University of Central Florida, majoring in journalism and psychology.