STUDY grants can greatly assist you if you don’t have the means to be in college. There are lots of study grants available. If you are planning to enroll in a community college or even at a state university, that’s a study grant in itself already because by law, community colleges and state universities are supposed to give tertiary education for free to deserving but indigent students. However, expenses incurred during your whole eight academic semesters in college especially if you are far from your hometown come into play.

In this way, you need to apply for student loans. Now there are two kinds of loans present in this country. There are federal loans and private loans. Federal loans are those granted by the federal government of the United States. They have very minimal interest rates and are payable to up to 30 years. If that doesn’t sound like a study grant to you, what else is? Remember that a study grant is not a dole out. Dole outs have never been a policy of the federal government of the United States, even to indigent people.

Even homeless people are housed in welfare shelters but they are taught livelihood there. Ultimately, they have to go away from the welfare shelter and go back into the real world to compete living with the mainstream peoples. That’s the same in tertiary education. Even though how poor one is, the government is teaching us to be self-sufficient in whatever form. With this kind of policy, the government is teaching us to be diligent. It is implying that college education is a very valued tool and must be taken care of precariously.

That’s why any sensible indigent college student who’s got a grant must strive hard not to miss any lessons and must be diligent in his or her studies. He or she must not be influenced to go out and party, leaving the lessons behind. There are times for parties but there must be time set aside to study. Acquiring a college grant starts from your formative years in high school. When you go to your college fair at your own high school campus, impress the visiting college admissions staff with a very compelling and emotional essay. Oops, make sure that essay doesn’t contain any grammatical errors otherwise the college admissions staff will be unmoved.

College admissions staffs are composed of educational psychologists and they are easily moved by compassion objectively to accept you. Every college in the United States offers some kind of study grants so if there is one, grab it immediately. A good college admissions application essay can definitely spell the difference on whether the institution will grant you a qualifying grant exam or not. So write it well and show it to your high school teachers for professional evaluation before passing it to the college admissions staff.

Another thing to watch out for is the offering of athletic study grants. That is why I’ve said earlier that acquiring a study grant begins in high school. If you’re already a member of the high school varsity team, then you can easily squeeze in through college.

MANY people in the world love to study. Some even go to other countries just to study. There is one classmate of mine back in high school, her name was Marie France. She was German. She went to the Philippines to study. And she didn’t even go to the capital Manila. She ventured down South where it was a perceived area of terrorists. That didn’t stop her to pursue her studies though.

And while in the Philippines, she had a jolly good time learning not just the national language of the country which is Tagalog but also two dialects here – Cebuano and Maranao. This on top of the scientific subjects that she has to study such as biology, physics, algebra and trigonometry. And in her pastime, Marie France toured the local beaches here like Camiguin and Boracay. She also tasted our local delicacies such as roasted pig, fish paste and chicken fetus. Now that’s what Fear Factor contestants are made of.

I myself did not stay here in the Philippines for good. I ventured out traveling. After I had taken my English degree in college, I went on to study all the three stages in a TOEFL course (that’s Teaching of English as a Foreign Language) – basic, intermediate and advanced. In the basic course, I was made to recite the shortest essay in my life. This is so because my classmates are still acquiring English as their second language. It is also exciting as I had classmates from such countries such as Rwanda and Singapore.

In fact, this Singaporean classmate of mine I ultimately fell in love with and we now have a daughter who is in third grade. We are now settling in Okinawa, Japan where my Singaporean wife Kim and I are teaching English to elementary students here. My family back home in the Philippines indeed belongs to a family of English teachers who have made good fortune. I have an elder brother who has made ends meet by working as a Hollywood English dialogue coach.

He’s currently back in the Philippines particularly in Mactan Island in Cebu to shoot a movie about the Yamashita gold treasure. The movie is tentatively titled as Deep Gold and my brother is dialogue coach for the lead actress in the movie who happens to be a Cambodian, Bebe Pham. My brother’s stint in the Philippines is not his first one though. He had already coached a Filipino actor, Cesar Montano, in a World War II movie where the shooting was done in New Zealand.

That’s just some of the benefits in studying. You have the adventure. Even if my brother is already married, his wife is tagging him along wherever there is a movie shooting. Of course, my sister-in-law doesn’t have a child yet but that definitely cannot prevent you from traveling around the world if you have the wit. Studying is definitely a key in all these things. Enjoy studying. Conquer the world later. And once you have, you will never regret those sleepless nights of studying.