Meteorologist April Vogt about her decade-long journey to graduate from college with as little accumulated student debt as possible while also pursuing her career ambitions. April talks about her personal interest in meteorology and the importance of education to her personal and global goals.
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Transcript –
Nikki Nolan: Welcome to the podcast!
April Vogt: Thank you!
Nikki Nolan: I’m so happy you are here. I’m really excited to get into this.
April Vogt: This is going to be super, super awesome.
Nikki Nolan: Tell me a little bit about your student debt. Do you have private loans? Do you have public loans? How much do you owe?
April Vogt: I started school back in 2008 originally and I’m graduating in 2020, so it’s been quite some time. Currently, I’m at around $60,000 for my student debt and all of it is federal loans. I made sure to keep it strictly on federal loans because of the interest rate that you get and some of the other benefits that go with it. And that also covered me being an out-of-state student as well, which I know a lot of people know when you leave, when you leave your home state, your debt can go up substantially. I did a lot of research before I left Oregon to go study in a different state and made sure that I found a school that would be able to have an affordable rate for me to go to, had my degree program, and all of those fun things. I think I’ve done substantially well, considering the amount of time I’ve been in school.
Nikki Nolan: What did you go to school for? I’d love to learn a little more about that.
April Vogt: Yeah. So, it’s been my dream since childhood to be a meteorologist. Atmospheric science was what I wanted to go to school for. I first started looking into schools, I was about 15, 16 years old and I had just started working. I was starting to work part-time for one of my grandmother’s friends, cleaning houses.
And then when I was 16, I was able to get a part-time job at a little fast-food area, our little fast-food restaurant, and it was kind of a mom-and-pop restaurant. So that was my official first job. And I looked at Oregon State University because they had a meteorology program, but unfortunately, they stopped that in 2007, which was a year before I graduated high school.
So that put a downer on my education goals and stuff. I was okay, I guess the best plan of action is to try to get as many of my remedial credits done in Oregon because Oregon obviously had in-state tuition and I’m a native Oregonian. And then I was like, I’m going to start seeing what other schools are out there that I could possibly get scholarships for or had a tuition assistance program.
I considered going to the University of Oklahoma because it was kind of one of my dream schools and they had a really cool meteorology program. However, I had applied for a scholarship there and due to some issues with my transcripts being transferred from my- I was going to Portland Community College- so some transcripts didn’t quite transfer over in time to meet the requirements for the scholarship. I was unable to qualify for it. I was really, really sad. But I was like, you know what, there’s always plan B out there. And then I found out that the University of Hawaii Manoa had what was known as the Western University Exchange program, which I thought was really cool.
And so it’s nicknamed WUE, that’s what the acronym is. And I was oh, I’m going to apply for the WUE program. And they had a really good meteorology program. And I mean, I’ve never been to Hawaii. I’ve never had that ability in my life, but I was like, how wrong could it be going to school in Hawaii?
I mean, there’s not really too many drawbacks on that. I applied and I got accepted and was accepted into the WUE program. In 2010, I started going to school in Honolulu, Hawaii, and I was there for about four and a half, five years. I think it was roughly between that timeframe.
And while I was there, I started working part time and it actually turned into full-time. I was working for Clearwire and for AT&T. And as I would go on ahead and go to each semester, I would try to minimize the amount of debt I had to take out. And I would, I was trying to keep everything at about 50% of the median income for my, degree path. I was looking at what atmospheric scientists and meteorologists make as a median in Portland or in local areas because this is where I wanted to be at.
And I saw that it was roughly around $80,000 to $95,000 a year. So I was “okay”. So as long as I can keep it at 50% or less, that was my goal. And I went on ahead and went out there and every time I started kind of getting close to that threshold, I would stop taking out any loans. At a couple of points, I took a few semesters off just so I could work and then save up as much money as I can and pay off everything I possibly could cash in hand. So it was really a process. That’s why it took me so long to get my bachelor’s because I was really trying to avoid getting past that threshold. Unfortunately, I had to stop at a certain point just because I was in a pickle where I didn’t have the ability to make enough to cover what I needed to, to pay for school.
And so, I took out a little bit more loans, which pushed me up to that $60,000 threshold, which I was okay with. I wasn’t too excited about it, but I was okay with it. And that’s where I actually got most of my debt from, was out there. But most of my peers that were in my program were pushing about $200,000 to $300,000.
And I was really proud of myself that I had not done that and a lot of them had private loans. So that was really my journey on working through college. I didn’t have any parents or grandparents or anyone paying for school. I knew I was a hundred percent on my own and it was hard.
There were some days, actually some terms where I was working 50 hours a week, going to school full time. I maybe got about three or four hours of sleep and, at a certain point, I, unfortunately, had to say, I need to back down a little bit. but the thing about it is I was so passionate about what I was doing and the difference that it could make, that I was okay, I’m just going to keep going through this and I’m not going to give up.
And then in 2015, I found out Oregon State University got a Climate Science program. And I was like, this is pretty close to what I want to do. And I’m super interested in climate science. It’s a little bit of a diverted path from straight meteorology, but my mindset is like trying to be a politician and not knowing American history. And in the meteorology world, you’re learning about what’s happening here, now, right at this moment, but you don’t get a lot of the background about how climate is impacting severe weather events. You get a little bit of a taste of it, but not a huge background. I was like, you know what? I know quite a bit about meteorology, I was about two years away from getting my degree completely done. So, I decided to transfer to Oregon State University because it was significantly cheaper and it was something that all my grants could cover. And I got accepted into the program and I started going to Oregon State and finished my degree program. And then now this is where I am today.
Nikki Nolan: So, you had a full-time and part-time job at some points, but I would love to learn more about some of these grants and what you did to get them.
April Vogt: Yeah. So, being a first-generation college student, I really didn’t know what I was getting myself into when I first applied for school.
When I was in high school, I made a pretty big effort to reach out to a lot of my advisors and talk to people that had parents in college and had talked to them about how do you get money for school? I think that was one of the best things that I did. And so obviously financial aid was a really important thing for me to do.
I applied for financial aid and I’ve got the Pell Grant and a few others through financial aid that I thought was really good. And then on top of that, I also reached out to my perspective universities. And was like, “hey, are there any other grants outside of just what I’m applying for, through financial aid that I may qualify for?”
And I knew at the time Portland Community College had a couple of grants that they had gotten from the National Science Foundation and a few other organizations. And I applied for those and I think I applied for like 30 or 40 of them. I wound up getting 10 grants out of it, which I thought was a pretty good turnout. I was really stoked about that. And every single one ranged from $500 to $1000. That was really cool. That money is going to help me out significantly. I think the key for people that are looking to go to college, who don’t have that support financial support from their families or other people in their lives is to not be afraid to reach out.
A lot of people get really, really scared about asking these questions. And to say that I wasn’t scared is a false statement because there were many times before I went, especially when I was in high school and I was going to PCC to meet with people or calling up people at different universities. I’d be shaking. The whole time I’d be shaking. I’d be so scared and I’m like, “oh gosh, they’re not going to help me. They’re going to just think I’m just another person trying to get money”, and I’m not. But when you just are open with people and you explain to them, this is your dream, and you’re going to do it no matter what, they seem to be much more willing to help you out because you have that passion there. You’re excited about what you’re doing. And that I think resonates a lot with advisors and financial departments. And even just when you’re applying for these grants that are a little bit larger. You’re okay, maybe I’ll get it. Maybe I won’t. And, and it helps. So, I think that’s one thing that I to suggest to people.
The other thing is don’t just go for those big grants. You see this big number of like $25,000, $50,000, and where some people will get those, I’ve never gotten a grant that large. I’ve gotten my grants by applying for multiple small grants. And that was a very, very good piece of advice I got from my high school advisor.
So, I definitely think that going for the small wins, don’t not go for the big ones, but just don’t put your entire life on hold because you don’t get that one big grant. The little ones will add up and they will help substantially.
Nikki Nolan: What are, some of the tactics that you used when maybe you got some of those rejections?
April Vogt: So, I actually tried to take time to do a self-analysis of what did I do wrong. I would reread over some of my proposals that I had sent and there were a lot of things that I found, especially in high school, because I mean, I wasn’t the world’s best writer then. I was like, oh, I definitely did not communicate my passion, for example, or my need. That was another thing when you don’t express the need that much.
I would sometimes focus one way and be like, oh, I love meteorology and this is what I’m going to do. But I wouldn’t express that I didn’t have family that was there to help me, or I would make it a single statement. That was one thing I found that kind of hurt me a little bit when I was rejected, but I didn’t let it bring me down.
I have my few minutes of why, why, why me? But then I get over it and I’m like, okay, let’s take a time to do a self-analysis here. Let’s reread everything. I actually brought my papers to a couple of advisors at the time, to have them look over them as well. And they gave me some positive feedback and of course, you know they critiqued it, which I thought was great, but it’s not taking it personally, I think is that thing. And being willing to be honest with yourself and say, oh, I need to work on my writing skills more, or maybe I need to express this a little better or explain that my need, is, is really dire. So, I think when you do get rejected, it’s actually a very good learning curve. It’s a good time to do some self-reflection.
And being honest with yourself is one of the hardest things anyone can do, no matter what it is in life. And once you’re honest with yourself, your doors open up immensely. All of a sudden life is just a whole, it’s totally different. You feel you become a better person and you learn from yourself and it’s okay, next time, we’re not making that mistake.
Nikki Nolan: So usually I ask, what has been the impact of student debt on your life. But usually, the people that I’ve talked to have been out of college for some period of time and they’ve already started paying back their loans. And so I’m curious, maybe that question has no resonance with you yet, but maybe it does. What have been some of the impacts of the student debt on your life so far?
April Vogt: Well, being 30 years old, I mean, I definitely am looking at things like buying a house and trying to get those what I like to call my big girl goals taken care of in life. So, I mean, I think the biggest impact it’s had on me so far is just the reality of the fact that the time to pay this back is today.
And so I’ve actually created a game plan and I’ve been working on this Excel sheet cause I am a nerd and I love numbers, have for quite some time. I’ve done a lot of research on debt-to-income ratio. I mean, so far what I’ve basically come to terms with is that I’ve decided that for the first couple years of being out of school, I want to go to grad school, but I’m going to put that off a little bit because there’s no, no time is too late to go back to school.
That’s been also another thing I’ve kind of told myself. I want to take a couple of years, kind of live the way I have been in college, quite frugal, saving my money up. Focus as much of my income on paying off my college debt as quickly as possible. And from there, I want to ideally save up some money and be able to buy things a house, actually have a car that doesn’t break down every 15,000 miles, something that’s sustainable for our planet.
Although I do have a great car that is awesome for the age it is in that sense, but at the same time, trying to prepare for the future, I think is something I’ve taken, great care in or great initiative in. I come from a very poor family. There were points where they had their high points, but I’ve watched what a lot of their mistakes have been.
And I think when you go to college, you don’t really think about the realities of where you’re going to be in 10 or 20 years. And I never wanted that for myself or for my children or for my family in the future. So, it was always a numbers game with me. I want to stick within this region of how much I’m going to make.
If I can make within this mean of how much, they say the median is for my degree program, then that would allow me to be able to pay off my debt. My goal is to pay it off in two years, which I know is a little kind of challenging, especially now with what’s going on with COVID and the current state of our economy.
Not to mention my degree program can have some controversy in it. I’m optimistic. I’m not giving up. And I think that if I can maintain this goal and stick to my budgeting plan, whereas it will be a little bit challenging to obviously get there, especially when you get flaunted things oh, this awesome, Tesla is super eco-friendly or I can live in this house that’s a hundred percent, self-sustainable. Just trying to keep those as more of okay, that’s my second goal after I get through school. I think that’s, what’s going to make me capable of paying this off quickly and then pursuing my other, my next steps in life from there. I don’t know if that really answers that question, but it’s a little for, future planning.
Nikki Nolan: Some of the things that I’m hearing that the impact of the student loans is like, if you didn’t have to take out these student loans, if you didn’t have to think about the cost of college, you probably would have graduated much earlier. You probably wouldn’t have been starting your career life at 30. I wish I had half the drive that you have when I was trying to figure this part out.
April Vogt: You’re amazing, Nikki though. You’re a phenomenal person. I am just proud of everything you’re doing. I hope you know that like you just seem like you are so awesome and you do have it together.
It’s hard though. It’s hard to put yourself in this position. And I think a lot of students, think about these things, but it’s always in the future, in the future. And it’s kind of when you see what the future can be, you have to draw yourself back and say, okay, let’s be reasonable about this. Having $200,000 or $300,000 in debt and starting off in the career world, it’s probably not the smartest idea. And yeah, grad school. Girl, I want to go to grad school so bad! I’ve been stoked about grad school since I was in high school, but I know I have to wait and that’s, that’s the hard part, but I can do it. I got this.
Nikki Nolan: I’m definitely going to have you back on the show to see where you go. Let’s go to high school and all the way through now, and just sort of hit on points of big decision-making. So that I can get a more holistic view of you and your life and who you are.
April Vogt: Well, I guess let’s go back even further than high school. Let’s go back to elementary school. Okay. We’re going to go way back. My dream of becoming a meteorologist started when I was eight. I never had really left Oregon prior to then. And my mom is a first-generation immigrant here in the United States. and she actually went through quite a bit. She was kind of abandoned here, so she hadn’t seen her birth family in over 20 years. And so, we went to Brownsville, Texas, after quite some time of her wanting to go visit them and reconnect with them. Her family was down in Mexico and it was just cheaper for our family to stay in the US and for them to come up and visit her.
So we were in Brownsville, Texas. It was around October and while we were there, there was a tornado. And I’d never seen a tornado in my life and my little brother and I were just absolutely stunned by this whole event. I mean, we’d never heard thunder like that. We’d never seen, any sort of shelf clouds, which at the time, I didn’t know, was a shelf cloud, what a shelf cloud was.
But I was watching this thing develop and we both were, I wanted this to come closer. We wanted to be in the middle of it. We were making plans about dancing in the storm. Yeah, well basically, it did come over where we were at. We were side scraped. But 15 minutes or so before it actually intercepted in our area, which in the nineties is amazing to even consider getting a warning that way, we started hearing sirens going off. And we could see the funnel cloud. And first, we were kind of like, um, is this a bad thing? Should we do something? And my mom was so stressed and tired. I went inside and I said, “Mom, I’m hearing this thing about a tornado. Do you know what’s going on?”
And she was fast asleep and she was like, It can wait hija. It can wait hija. Huh? Oh, I, I don’t know. And so, they came and banged on our door and we had to seek shelter and we were side scraped by it. Luckily, where we were at, it survived, but there were some buildings around us that unfortunately did not, and it made a huge impact on my life because that morning it was beautiful and sunny.
And I remember seeing a school bus with kids going to school and I’m just like, these kids have their entire life ripped apart from them and they really didn’t have any warning. No one told them there was going to be a tornado today and it broke my heart because I knew I could go back to Oregon and I still had all my toys there and my family was safe and I, myself still had all my stuff, and all my loved ones and everything that meant, actually meant something to me.
But these people didn’t. And as a kid, to have that reality check, it’s just really impactful in your life. So I decided that I really want to know more about what was happening. And so I actually started this game called “tornadoes” at my elementary school when I got back. And me and my few friends that were super big nerds, we would spend hours in the library, reading about what tornadoes were.
Anytime we saw a cloud kind of looked like a cone, we call it a tornado and pretend we were running from it. But it was something that, I was actually quite fearful of for a little while, and to get over my fear, I figured educating myself was something that would really help me. And so, as I got older, I got more and more passionate about it.
I found myself going to the local public library and reading scholarly articles, which I understood a fraction of at the time about tornadoes. And I spent a lot of time researching them. And as I got older, unfortunately, my family had a fallout and I actually lived in a shelter for a while and I was homeless with my mom.
And so, that really made another impact on my life. I was kind of okay, I have to go to school. And during this period, I still, for some reason, studying meteorology and studying weather just made me happy. It really did. And I was asked during an event. This thing called kids turned to help kids at the time, kind of recover from divorcing parents and all these things.
A judge came in and asked me what I wanted to be someday. And I told him I’m going to be a storm chaser. I’m going to be a meteorologist. And he told me that was a nice dream, but I needed to be realistic. I probably wouldn’t graduate high school. And I looked him straight in the eye. I was very, at the time, I was very respectful to authority.
I would never even say a cuss word or anything. And I looked at him and had a few hard-headed words to say, and I said, I’m going to do it. I’m going to do it. And oh, by the way, my parents will get back together. And I was just so angry at the whole situation, but those words resonated in me. It just lit a fire of no, I’m not going to be a statistic. I’m going to be a fact. Maybe statistically speaking children in my shoes don’t graduate high school, but I’m going to prove them wrong. I’m going to do this. And it was funny. My parents actually did wind up getting back together, later divorced, unfortunately just a few years ago, but they did get back together.
So that was an awesome, awesome thing. But I never lost sight of that feeling and that fire. And when I was in high school, I made it a point that I was going to graduate. I wanted to graduate top of my class, which I, unfortunately, did not, but I did maintain good grades. And when I got into college, it was just my first day, I remember walking into a college class and I just, his words went through my head again. And not only did I graduate high school, but I also’m in college and I’m going to go to a university and I’m going to get my degree and nothing’s going to stop me. And I think, that negative situation, most people would have been like, okay, okay, I’m going to give up, but it just burnt this fire of passion in me. And I just was so in love with whether it was kind of my escape from reality because I’ve seen the power of nature and it’s just wonderful to study something that’s bigger and greater than us as people. And I wanted to just absorb myself in that and surround myself in that world. It made me happy.
And I think that’s where I kind of got to, and I was able to complete college. And why I didn’t give up was because I knew that this was something that would change my life and not only change my life, but change other lives around me. And my goal has always been to save lives through science. I think I’m definitely doing that.
Nikki Nolan: I could just feel your passion, through the computer do not lose your passion. It’s so hard as the world goes and people just tell you can’t do things or that there are systems that come into place that are specifically built so that you aren’t successful. It slowly started for me, I realized, I was very passionate and then grad school killed me. Grad school took all the passion sort of out of me. It made me very realistic.
So many people never even had that passion, cause that passion was pulled out of them. And when we find our passion it is, I find it so important. It’s like you found your path, the life that you’re supposed to go down and if you can just live every day passionately that’s the life that you should have. You should be able to wake up in the morning and just be like, I have passion in my soul, not weight. Life is hard, but-
April Vogt: It is, but you nailed it right there. Passion is key. We constantly surround ourselves around, the day-to-day struggles of, okay, I’ve got to pay this bill or I’ve got to have gas in the morning to get here.
And those are very important things, but I think passion and waking up in the morning and saying, I’m doing something that’s making a difference. All those little things that you were just talking about are worth it. It’s almost it’s just kinda breathing or eating. It’s just there’s a little effort, but what you’re doing is a greater thing, which I’m so happy you’re doing what you love, Nikki.
Nikki Nolan: That’s amazing. And I hope everybody out there does what they love and follows their passion. Cause if we all did that, this world would be such a better place.
April Vogt: I one hundred percent agree. The world would be so much better if everybody was just very passionate and following what they actually want to be following,
Nikki Nolan: So if you could go and tell your younger self, some advice from all this knowledge that you’ve acquired, what would you tell yourself?
April Vogt: I guess it might sound kind of cliche, but don’t let social stigmas get to you. a lot of times, especially as females we are always flooded with things that the media tells us and, society tells us that we have to be. And I know at some points, especially in middle school and high school, when I was going through some of the stuff with my family, I’d let some of those things sometimes get into my head.
You always get told you’re not pretty enough. You’re not popular enough. You’re not great enough at this or that. And I think, not letting those things get to you, at least for me, I would have told myself that and just say, don’t let, don’t let these things get to you. They’re not worth your time.
People are gonna love you for you the minute you’re really you. Pretending to be something you’re not sometimes I think especially back in those days, I would always try to, I wanted to fit in, and the more I tried to fit in the more of an outcast I became. I mean, I think that that would be my biggest piece of advice is just, it’s not worth it.
Focus on your passion. Focus on what you want to do and everything else in life will just fall into place. The people that really matter in your life are going to be there. You’re not, don’t get wrapped up with, relationship drama or, all of those things. As much as it may sound like that stuff wasn’t an issue in my life, it definitely was. And I think for a lot of people, male or female, I mean, anybody, you’re constantly thrown these different stigmas in your face. And at a certain point, it gets to your head. And I think my biggest points of depression or, anxiety or anything like that actually came from society telling me that I’m not good enough as, as a person, because I’m not meeting these social stigmas. And that was in my eyes, looking back a bunch of hokey dokey, it was not true. It was completely, I mean, utterly not true. And so for anyone out there listening, I mean, you’ve gotta be you. You focus on you. You be true to yourself.
And if anybody’s going to sit there and make fun of you for that, let them, they’re not worth your time. You are bigger and better than that. I guess that would be my biggest piece of advice. And obviously don’t give up, not that I’ve given up, but don’t ever give up. That’s also another thing, especially for young kids right now, with a lot of the things that are happening in society, it’s easy to want to give up.
It’s easy to feel overburdened by all of society’s problems. especially currently with a lot of the movements that are happening in a lot of the issues that are being addressed. I mean, there are things that need to be addressed and it’s almost scary. It’s almost, too much, especially for children and teenagers.
And I think the thing is focused on your single passion. Focus on who you are as a person. Don’t let society define you. You define yourself. And you just keep on that track and life is going to be amazing. I promise you.
Nikki Nolan: Those are some great words of advice. Is there anything you want to plug?
April Vogt: Yeah, I guess I’m definitely, you are welcome to follow me on Facebook. April Vogt is my name V-O-G- T. So pronounced vote but spelled the German way. Feel free to follow me on Instagram and Facebook. My Instagram name is @808_beat.
Nikki Nolan: I’ll put it in the show notes so that people can find you.
April Vogt: Okay, perfect. And then the other thing is I’m working for an amazing woman right now in a nonprofit organization and that’s Power Up for Climate Solutions. And I really want to give them a shout-out because the work that they’re doing is phenomenal. Anyone who has any interest in climate change, let alone solutions to the issues that we’re currently having, I would really recommend that you follow her, follow this nonprofit organization. It was created by Carla Wise.
So that’s her, who I’m referencing. She’s a phenomenal woman, very well-educated and I think her organization has the potential to make a great difference in this world. I definitely want to give them a shout-out. On my social media pages, I’m sure you’ll see a bunch about this project I’m working on called the Lolo Project. And it’s a project I started back in 2014, to help advance civilian warning systems for tornadoes.
It was kind of a passion that again I had from when I was eight. And I had been doing a lot of work on research. I’ve developed a little microchip that’s able to predict or use, be able to be used in your mobile device. And it turns it into a highly accurate weather station. And my goal is to hopefully by 2025, if not by 2030 at the latest, have it implemented in every single US phone in the country.
So that way we can create a surface level analysis grid for, meteorological analysis as well as climate analysis as well. Right now in the meteorology world and in the climate world, we have very little surface data. We have surface stations that are, we see maybe one to two, especially out here in, on the west coast that tells, try to tell us whether for the whole region and I’m sorry, that’s not adequate.
And I think in 2020, we’re living in an era where we can utilize technology to help us kind of bridge some of these gaps. I know it’s not perfect and I know there’s going to be a lot of issues we’re going to need to work, kind of work over. But I think if we can create this, it’s our first step to be able to understand the weather better, as well as the climate. And it will also help civilians in the event of severe weather event. Because if there is a severe weather event, you can actually get warnings, that is much more accurate than what is issued by the national weather service and the emergency broadcast system, right on your phone. As well as you, as a person can actually start to understand some of the indicators that we see prior to these events and make educated decisions on whether or not you need to leave your area, prepare for a severe weather event in your home, or, take action in some way to protect yourself, your family and property around you.
Nikki Nolan: Thank you so much for being on the podcast. It was so lovely talking and learning about you today.
April Vogt: Thank you, Nikki was so amazing talking and learning about you too. You’re an amazing woman. And don’t you forget that girlfriend! Your work is making a difference.
Nikki Nolan: Thank you so much.
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