Unfortunately, despite me being accepted to SCAD (Savannah College of Art and Design) and winning a decent amount of scholarship money from them, I probably will not be able to transfer there for the fall quarter for numerous reasons.  I've never been so bummed out in the longest time.

I really don't want to point fingers, but I feel as if it's both very slightly my parents' fault for this, and also mostly mine.  Going to SCAD is not cheap ($32,000/yr for tuition, plus either going on-campus and paying roughly $9000/yr or going off-campus to an apartment and pay under $750/month.  Don't forget traveling down to Georgia from Pittsburgh, PA), and my parents are understandably worried about me having to take on some big loans if I would go there.  I have quite a few potential ideas for how to ease the burden of paying for things on their part and taking out less in a loan, but they continue to be worried about what I will have to pay back after graduating and the interest that will be with it.  And despite my research, I can't find anything really giving a good estimate of how much graduates from the school usually get paid after graduating, or if they even pay off their loans.  From the many stories and reviews I've dug up though, I have yet to read a story of a student that graduated from SCAD and couldn't land themselves a good job in their field shortly after graduating.

On the other hand, I am also at fault here.  I'm trying to make an argument for why I should go, yet I don't even completely grasp why going to an art school is better than a state school that happens to have an art major.  Not only that, I don't even know how much an animator (or one from SCAD) could earn walking out the door, and I am worried also that whatever pay I get will not be enough to cover my loans.  It is hard to say what I can earn with a job that relies a lot on what I actually work on and with who, as pay can differ depending on the project.  The big goof from me however is because of me slipping on my grades last semester (and breaking a promise I made to my parents that I could keep all my grades up to B's and A's before going to SCAD), my GPA is right below a 3.0.  I can't accept any of the scholarship money SCAD gave me until my GPA is above a 3.0.  And if I don't register this fall, I will have to start the application process over again if I reapply.

I'm lost.  I don't know if I'm right with me being able to work things out with the loans I would have to get with going to SCAD, and I don't know if my parents will trust me enough to back me up on what would no doubt be a commitment.  But why would they even think of trusting me whenever the one promise I made to them was broken?  How could I fully commit myself to going that distance when I have already broken a promise?

If there happens to be anyone reading this that knows a thing or three about SCAD and/or the field of animation (or anything about college and loans for that matter), is there any tips or advice you could offer to someone that's not sure whether they could go to a big art school, and/or even afford paying for it?

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Anyways, despite me saying this a few times now, I'm going to try starting commissions very soon, so keep an eye open.  In an effort to try and keep the Spike Da Dragon blog active while I'm busy with other things however, I'm trying to find time to make a whole bunch of responses at once, then use the Queue function on Tumblr to have them automatically publish once every week.  If I can get four done, then that would be a month of time I can spend working on something else, such as the animation for Summer of Sonic and other things.  The blog would be still publishing content, and I can make other things.  Everyone wins!

Hopefully I will be able to publish more content on here soon.  I will be completely honest, this whole mess with trying to go to SCAD has been eating up almost all of my time these past few weeks, and I fear it may all be for nothing.