When I was 16 years old, I learned the most important lesson of my life. This year, at 22, I relearned that lesson in a completely different light.

Picture it: world cultures class, 1994.

Ms. Tarantini taught us a score of timeless, sometimes even futuristic ideals. For example, the notion that she would not answer to "Mrs." even though Tarantini was her married name. She would mutter something about being independent from exclusive titles. The "history" class she taught was renamed "herstory."

Indeed, "Ms.," as we lovingly nicknamed her, published a set of ideas — commandments of society, if you will, which she referred to as her "Laws of Herstory."

Once, at the beginning of the school year when we were not yet accustomed to her eccentricity, she arrived at our classroom at her typical harried pace, plopped her enormous, overflowing handbag on a desk, and announced, "Today, I'm going to teach you about this bag."

And my life has never been quite the same since.

She began on a Biblical rant of Moses leading the Israelites out of their enslavement in Egypt, Christopher Columbus and his plight to fund his trip to find a new world, and our goals for a college education.

"So," she asked, "what do these three things prove to you? What is the first law of herstory?"

We stared back at her blankly, forgetting her earlier comment about the handbag. In the back of my head, I could hear a voiceover saying, "Anyone? Bueller?"

After an unintentional moment of silence, Ms. calmly walked to the blackboard and wrote what we would learn to be an absolute truth.

Law No. 1: He who holds the purse strings holds the power.

Pretty deep.

Since then, the Israelites have been no less led through the desert, and Columbus has been no less successful in his dream, but I have been all the more endowed with a college education and all the expenses that come along with it.

So, getting a part-time job in an area so highly concentrated with students wasn't necessarily the easiest feat to accomplish, but over time, I found that work was becoming less of an option and more of a necessity.

When rent fees, grocery costs, and parking rates rival metropolitan areas, how can we be expected to see things like a loaf of the non-Wonder variety bread as nothing less than a luxury reserved for the elite few?

Point in fact: If our basic necessities such as housing and food were more reasonably priced, perhaps this university would be a happier place to live. Maybe if we could afford decent nutrition and the occasional caffeine fix, we would be able to get more quality out of our "quality education" rather than feel the need to obsess over finances.

People the world over have recognized that money is a driving factor in society. So driving, in fact, that we too often sacrifice the important parts in life — the parts with no monetary value — because of the "stuff" we so long to acquire.

In fact, if it were not so pervasive a force, we might not even be here, striving for the degree that will allow us to lead a conservatively comfortable lifestyle in the future, at the very least.

But I beg to reason that while people aren't going to start bartering with chickens anytime soon, we should inch our desire for money downward on our ladder of priorities.

Being somewhat "on my own" at school, having my part-time job responsibilities, and doing my fair share of the bill paying have helped me begin to understand the "true" value of money versus things like family, good health, and love.

The brushes with death that I've vicariously experienced through the lives of my loved ones, however, have brought the issue to a head.

I am ashamed that it took the fear of losing a loved one this year to make me realize how trivial material items really are. But at least something did.

At least something was able to open my eyes and free my spirit to appreciate the things that I've been blessed with that carry no monetary worth. Something allowed me to let go of the idea that I have to allow the holder of the purse strings to be my puppeteer.

I've written my own first law of herstory: He who holds the purse strings lets the purse strings hold the power.