I went to college and it worked out very well for me. Mostly career-wise. I didn’t want to be in college, I didn’t enjoy it much for the first three years, I just couldn’t think of anything else to do. But almost everyone I know has finished college or the equivalent.
OTOH I don’t think it’s for everyone. Based on what you said in the OP I don’t think this is the right time for you. Maybe later if you get some motivation. But just going and hating it doesn’t magically make you a better person, nor does it guarantee a good income.
I have a friend right now who has a son in a top 300 college. He hates it. He’s taking two courses each semester and usually gets Cs. But he’s a computer whiz and very entrepreneurial. It’s obvious he should just get out of college and either sart a business or get some specialized computer certificate. But the family is all upper class professionals so he doesn’t stand a chance.
I graduate with my BA in a very snooty (read: a lot of knowledge but practically useless) line of study this coming June. For all it’s impractical uses though, I really love my major. It’s self-indulgent, for sure.
FTR, I had a pretty damn good job on nothing but my AA and a bare resume. 35k to start and room to grow up to 60. On the one hand, it was plenty of money if I just wanted to get by. On the other, well, I wasn’t happy making bombs for a living, and those jobs don’t yell out at you (I interview very, very well). Also, work in defense (the major line of employment in my area) tends to have a high layoff rate.
I’m going for my JD partly because I want to help the community as an assistant DA, and partly because 35-60k a year wasn’t addressing my desires in life.
Where on earth did you get that information, Sun. Pretty extreme, imo. Not one of those qualities describe me, nor any of the people I work with. Except, by the way, my degreed supervisor.
Oh, and one of our engineers.
I have a Postgraduate Professional Degree in Education and the debt to show for it. I have absolutely no regrets. In fact, if I had infinite cash flow, I would take courses for pleasure or matriculate into a second degree.
I agree with the poster who said it is important to carefully consider degree choice, especially if you borrow. Most people want to study what they love; however, a healthy dose of pragmatism is important. The degree needs to be marketable.
With the economy shift and the loss of high paying manufacturing and trade jobs, it is important to get either a college degree or technical/vocational training. Jobs that didn’t require a degree twenty years ago now favor applicants with a four year degree. A Police Officer is an example. Students graduate with a four year degree in Criminal Justice and apply for jobs in law enforcement, making these jobs even more competitive.
A person who does not want to go to college should consider vocational training because decent paying jobs for unskilled workers do not exist.
Ultimately, it boils down to ambition and determination to succeed at anything. I firmly believe the difference between those who succeed and those who don’t is desire.
My husband has a fine arts degree from a private liberal arts college. He has never worked a day in his field and often laments about his need to throw clay. He went to a four year party. He has no regrets only great memories about nothing academic. He still has life long friends from those fun college days.
I’ll have my degree in a semester + 1 week. I didn’t go to university immediately, though, after graduating high school. I traveled a bit, then went to school.
After 3 years at community college, it wasn’t for me.
I finally returned after I noticed that people who were dumber than me and inept kept getting great paying jobs. Their only outstanding factor was that they had degrees. So, 4 years ago, I went back full time. Now that I put on my resume I’m due to get my Bachelors in May, I get a lot of job offers.
Has college been worth it? A most resounding NO. Seriously. I’m not trying to come off as a pompous ass, but I didn’t try and have 3 B+s on an otherwise flawless transcript. I know dumb people who haven’t tried either and still came away with 3.0 or higher. If you just want a degree, I recommend a distance learning school like Thomas Edison State College or Kaplan University. If you want the joys of campus life, live on campus. Otherwise, go to community college for 2 years, THEN figure where you want your education headed. My only other advice is to make either Business or Psychology your minor if you’re not majoring in one of them. The value I’ve gotten out of those classes are the only things I’m glad I paid tuition for.
Well…skills are skills and for a lot of jobs you don’t need to get those skills in college or vocational school. Granted, a lot of jobs REQUIRE college or votech - you can’t pick up the skills to be a doctor by apprenticing yourself to one, you need beauty school in order to get your cosmetology license. But it IS possible to fall into a job as a roofer, pick up the business quickly, decide you have four friends and a truck, and open up a roofing company where you do quite well - and have fifty people working summers for you by the time you are thirty - and have put the nail gun away. Its even possible to do that working for someone else - the guy running the company discovers you have more math skills than the average roofer and has you doing estimates, or ordering materials - and takes the nail gun from your hand. You then take that experience over to a bigger construction company, start scheduling subcontractors, and fall into project management. You won’t get rich renting a chair from someone as a hairdresser - and beauty school doesn’t tend to teach you the skills for owning a salon - but that’s where the money is.
The question for the OP is “what do you want to do” and “what native skills do you have.” The path from high school graduate to college professor is going to involve college. The path from high school graduate to owner of a bakery - tech school might be good, college wouldn’t hurt, but neither are required. If you go into corporate America looking for a job as a desk jockey, its possible to do ok without the degree - and far more likely you will find the lack of degree limiting at one or more points in your career.
I went to college straight from high school, and earned 2 degrees in 4 years. I had a job in my chosen profession in my third year. I also learned a great deal more about things that I never would have thought to explore, like primate evolution, astronomy, American folklore, Swedish social democracy, abnormal psychology, and so on. I learned more about critical thinking, research skills, debating techniques, etc.
But I didn’t go to college to get a high-paying job. I went for an education. It broadened my horizons, and I learned more about the world. Now I am a stay-at-home-mom, but the education that I have helps me educate my kids, too. I don’t care if they are rich when they grow up, but I do want them to be knowledgeable and informed. I value intelligence and knowledge over money. (If I’d ever cared about money, I wouldn’t have bothered with degrees in Journalism and Political Science!)
Extra job training is always a plus, as you end up acquiring marketable skills. Whether that means going to trade school, becoming certified for a specific trade, or going to university/community college and getting a degree is dependent upon what you think you’ll be good at and happy with doing for the next 20+ years.
I have a BA in Anthropology (museum work focus) and am working on a MLIS (Master’s in Library and Information Science). I switched majors a couple of times during college, and this was mostly because I jumped from high school to college without a great idea of what I wanted to do in life. (Honestly, I’m still not that sure, but I’m working on defining it better and now have a career path that I like.) I ended up with Anthropology because of its broad scope (it dips into a lot of other social sciences, can deal with language and deals with hard sciences in some areas of it) and ended up minoring in museum studies. In my minor coursework, I interned at a state-run museum* and was offered a job within the department of state while I was there. I didn’t take it. Why? I didn’t really see a good solution to being able to afford the start-up costs of moving out of the apartment I shared (bad neighborhood, bad roommate) and wasn’t really sure whether staying in Tallahassee was going to be a good idea for me. Although I could have made a pretty good career with that first step, I really didn’t want to play the “let’s live in Tallahassee after college” game, as I had too many negative examples of what living in a college town beyond graduation did to one’s lifestyle.
I ended up moving home, temping, and applying to grad school programs. A year and a half after I graduated, I’m finishing up my first semester as a graduate student and will be starting a new job as a library associate soon. Yes, it’s a job that I could have had through this county with just a high school diploma, but the on-the-job experience is what I’m getting out of it… well, that and a better pay scale than what I’m “qualified for” as a person who has a degree that has very little use in this area. Thing is, I’m not looking for a giant paycheck, but a career that I can enjoy or at least tolerate, and being a librarian/information specialist/archivist/curator would be an ideal fit. Right now, I’m working on the librarian aspect and trying to integrate archival and information specialist skills into it. If I ever feel the need for a second degree, I may end up being an ideal curator for an art museum.
What are you passionate about? What do you have job experience with? Is there something that especially interests you that you think you could focus on? Would you be okay with being a data-related person, or are you more hands-on? There are plenty of programs and job training available that will help you enhance and market your skills in a way that will make you more successful.
[sub]*I have to admit that being an intern in a museum was great practice for “real world office politics” and gave me some really great skills that I didn’t realize I had. I’ve always been able to talk to random strangers (surrounded by adults as a small child) with relative ease, but I never really got that “presentation/talking to groups of people” bit down until I had to do it multiple times per day as a docent. I had no guided script, and I had a docent manual (which I contributed info for) full of information on many aspects of the exhibit (historic objects including art and everyday items focused around Napoleon) for me to choose from. I was shy at first, but then after a few times, I really got into it and changed what I talked about little bit by little bit as I went along. I learned how to gauge the audience I was speaking to, and what to mention and what to avoid-- but I did end up explaining tuberculosis to a group of first graders in a successful and not scary manner. These really, really, really helped me, as I can now present information like a pro as long as I’m at least mildly familiar with the information. If you’re planning on going the college route, try to intern somewhere while you’re in school, as you’ll learn something useful on the job and might get a job offer if you prove yourself. If you can, intern at least twice so you can learn about more than one environment. If I had had more time, I probably would have broken up my internship hours into two museums to get more experience-- and I would have interned earlier in an attempt to get job experience relevant to my career field while still in school.[/sub]
Everyone, your advice is great. It’s really making me think more about decisions I can make. I think I might go back to school for maybe one or two classes that interest me. Writing classes are fun to me, and I really want to show my creativity with my writing. I don’t have high hopes of making that into a career, but I think I’ll just do what interests me for now.
You guys rock, by the way. Was kind of waiting for the “Don’t be a fucking tard, go to school!” from someone.
Have you considered community college? It’s generally a lot easier (and cheaper!) to take classes there part-time, and the programs are usually set up to be two years if you’re doing them full-time. Having the associates degree will give you a bullet point to put on your resume and make the four-year degree a little easier to get if you do decide to go for it later.
College is hard for just about everyone. Between the academic expectations, social pressures, being away from home for extended periods of time and simply adjusting to a new situation, it’s a lot to take in. That’s kind of the point. If it were easy, what would be the point.
I have my B.S. in Mass Media & Communications. I loved school and if I never had to leave to go earn money to feed myself and pay rent and whatnot I would still be a full time student. My degree has been so helpful in my life that I can’t imagine what life would be like without it.
When I graduated I was still looking for a job in my field so I talked to a friend who was working part time at the maternity store in the mall about a job there while I was looking for something better. I interviewed with the manager and she hired me at $1.50 more per hour than my friend who had been working there a year simply because I had a degree.
When I interviewed and got hired on at a much better company where I had a desk and a chair (which was a HUGE step up from retail!) I was paid more than the other employees there based on my degree. After being there for 2 years and moving on to another company I got hired in at the same pay scale as everyone else but was fast tracked to management because as one of the few people there with a degree I was qualified to move up the ladder where most of my other coworkers were not.
I decided to move across the country to NYC I got hired on at $13,000 more per year than I had been earning in Texas, leaving me with about $1000 per month for savings/spending on crap despite the cost of living increase. I see musicals and operas all the time, I buy books by the truckload, I donate to charity, etc. all because my degree allowed me enough money to live such a lifestyle. I probably could have made decent money doing something without a college degree, but it seems to me that my degree has been the equivalent of one of those Community Chest cards in Monopoly, speeding me through the game and allowing me to pick up all kinds of financial bonuses along the way.
Be warned, OP: most non-four-year degrees that don’t lead you straight into a specific vocation (plumber, welder, nurse, whatever) aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on. I have three ROP certificates, in Biotechnology, Engineering and Animation, and not a single one has done a damn thing for me.
Just around the time I graduated from college, I wrote myself a note about hard I worked and how hard it was in general. I was trying for a 4.0 in a good school that had little grade inflation and mostly succeeding, holding two part-time jobs and a demanding internship in a neuroscience lab. My schedule was planned down to the minute and ran all 24 hours in the day.
I don’t have the physical note today but I know that it existed and basically what it said. I worked HARD for those things and I can’t fall into the trap about how great things were in college. Some of it was but the workload could be incredible too. I have never had an office just that goes up even to 50% of the workload I had at times in college.
OTOH, my next youngest brother is plenty academically smart but never expressed an interest in college. He went into the Marines instead, gained some skills and discipline, and now has a nice blue collar but solidly middle class lifestyle with a beautiful wife and children.
My youngest brother went to LSU but found an interest in police work. He got hired as a police officer for the LSU police department while he was there and worked his way up to be the head of the canine unit (LSU is huge and has a full law enforcement agency on its own). The best part was that he got paid to be there, and got to take classes for free. He even bought his own house while in school. Seven years after he started, he is graduating in a couple of weeks, then moving and trying something new.
There are lots of routes that are available for someone with forward thinking and they don’t all include traditional 4-year degrees.
English is a marketable degree. You can pursue an English degree with a composition track. Journalism is another discipline that will provide an outlet for your writing.
**ultrafilter, ** gives good advice. A junior college is an affordable way to pursue your education. You can take your general education requirements while you shop for a major.
Not that I’m suggesting anything, but Shagnasty’s story about his cop brother reminds me of this girl I knew at the U of A. She was a stripper at a really upper-crust club, and made enough that she owned her own home as a freshman.
It might depend on how good a match college is for you. I never found college particularly hard, and my kids haven’t either. Hell, it’s a lot more fun than working, and most of my work has been pretty much fun.
I know kids who have had problems leaving home, but they mostly had parents who hung on to them with an iron grip all through high school. College is a great place to learn about leaving home in a protected environment - kind of a half way house. And I went to college in the old days, with once a week telephone calls and gasp letters.
I knew very few people in my dorm who had big problems, and almost all of us were far from home, and we were all theoretically under academic pressure.
