College is ridiculously expensive. CSU’s student body reflexively cringes when we get a budget update from Tony Frank, explaining to us the multiple reasons that tuition must increase…again. College students across the country are notoriously poor; we’re known to eat Ramen easily once a day and have found new and improved ways to pinch a penny.

So it is both surprising and awe-inspiring to hear the stories of college students that have found a way to pay their own way into this college sphere, without parents chipping in. It takes a lot of sacrifice to understand that your family cannot afford or is unwilling to help pay for your education, and the fact that many students take that information and decide to work towards a degree anyway is incredible.

Those of the student body that are paying for college themselves, with no parental assistance, we salute you. There are a lot of roadblocks on the way to complete financial independence, and the fact that higher education means enough to you to overcome all of them is extraordinary. Even though CSU is a land grant University, which is supposed to help ease the cost that is set on students, inevitably every year we will still get the dreaded email in our inbox, sinking hopes of having any extra spending money.

Increases in tuition make it harder and harder for independent college students to continue to be independent; this is disheartening and discouraging. So for those at CSU continuing to pay for college all on your own, props to you for investing so much in your education.