If you’re looking for a way to pay for a sonography / ultrasound degree, there may be many options available to you. There are grants from the federal government, from trade institutions and from private organizations for starters. There are loans from the government, from private lenders and from the schools themselves. There are also scholarships from a variety of these and other sources. The following information should help you determine the best way to pay for school, so you can begin an exciting career in this important health care field.

Health care grants are the first option you should look into if you are dreaming of becoming a sonographer or ultrasound technician. Whether you want to become a nurse, doctor, assistant or technician, there are a variety of grants available in the health care field. Some are from the federal government, and some are from other sources.

Scholarships are one of the best ways to help pay for your studies at a college or trade school, but they are also the hardest to get. You may qualify for the Scholarships for Disadvantaged Students Program, which is available to low-income students and is set up by the United States Department of Health and Human Services. Or, if you agree to work in an underserved area, you might qualify for scholarships from the National Health Service Corps. There are numerous scholarships for Native Americans and other minority groups. Private scholarships are available from organizations, clubs, foundations, companies and other institutions, as well as from the schools themselves. Many scholarships are available that reward academic excellence if you have completed at least a semester of school with a high GPA.

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Writing: An Opportunity, Not A Chore

“I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means.” Joan Didion, author

The lady’s right on the money. I drive the point home in all my business communication (writing skills and presentation skills) training: Writing is thinking. Don’t view it as a frustrating technical exercise in grammar, a series of hurdles to trip over as you dump your jumbled thoughts on a blank legal pad or screen, hoping that they’ll eventually come together in some loose confederation.

Writing allows you to think — really think over time — about what you know and what you might need to find out before you put your thoughts in some logical order. Please indulge me as I offer an example close to home:

I have a 19-year-old son named Will. He’s a promising sophomore baseball pitcher at a fine public liberal arts college in Maine. (Fortunately, he’s adopted. Had be been our biological child, he’d probably be third-string Chess Club.) Will is a decent student — nothing exceptional, but shrewd enough to use the English language in ways that satisfy his professors.

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I like many others watched the Oscar’s last night. Or, to be more accurate I kind of watched them as I dozed through the slow parts. It wasn’t the most entertaining Oscar ceremony, nor were there any great surprises. The pageantry seemed overly staged and stiff in my opinion. So what lessons could we learn from the Oscar’s?

I’m a firm believer that you can learn something from most everything. It’s just a matter of looking for the lesson. The Oscar’s are no different. So I opened my mind for a minute and here’s what I observed.

If you take risks it can pay off. The young lady who starred in Precious didn’t win an Oscar for her performance but her story gave us all hope. She cut a college class to take a chance and audition for the part. Totally unknown and not a trained actress she got the part and wowed the critics and the world. She took a risk and it paid off. How many of us are afraid to take a risk? How many times have we ignored success because we wouldn’t take a risk?

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