I wasn’t being dismissive about trade schools at all. Hopefully I didn’t come across that way. I meant it as, it makes a lot more sense, trade school does, than college. It seems a lot more practical.
I never said going to college was irresponsible, a bad decision, or wrong. What I said is that I didn’t like it, it’s not for everyone, and declining to go does not doom one to a life of menial jobs, and people with attitudes about that fact piss me off.
BTW, I made six figs last year, and know how to spell “aspirations,” “lotion” and “beautiful.” 
You could be an airline pilot, though if it’s not something you’ve already thought about then don’t bother, you have to want it pretty badly to get through the various obstacles in your way.
Even then you have to know basic algebra, how to read and use graphs, and so on.
History is interesting and, I think, worthwhile. But English, Political Science, Pyschology, and other knowledge helps put it into context.
:eek: If someone didn’t know basic algebra and how to read graphs before he went to college, I would not want him flying any airplane I was in.
Court Reporter is a pretty good career - you have to take a certificate course which I believe takes two years (may vary by state) but it is pretty much all hands on practical training. You do have to have a bit of a strong stomach because let’s face it you’re transcribing verbatim testimony about people’s bad deeds and poor judgment. You can work for the court or as an independent contractor. You can even do closed captioning for TV.
You might also consider the Post Office. Civil service exams are usually required, depending on the exact position you apply for. I believe some preference is given to veterans in Federal hiring.
Have you any interest in law enforcement? Some college is usually required but not necessarily a degree, and your military experience would be an asset to your application.
Well, yeah, it’s high-school algebra. ‘I have 38 gallons of usable fuel. I burn nine gallons per hour. I’ve been aloft for one hour and forty minutes. Given the current winds, am I still good for my primary destination with a half-hour of fuel in reserve?’ And the only graphing I’ve done involves multiplying weights and distances from the datum, adding the results, and seeing if they fall within the weight-and-balance envelopes. (And checking density altitude, and making sure I don’t fly in the ‘dead man’s curve’, and that sort of thing.)
Fair enough. FWIW, my snark wasn’t meant towards you or even the OP. My frustrations comes from this attitude of “I don’t want to do something because it’s hard or it sucks.”
Maybe I’m just being a grumpy old man, but jeez! Kid’s these days.
I also hope the OP realizes that the probability of him dealing with shit he doesn’t want to do increases exponentially with out a degree.
The OP could go to college and get a degree and then pursue whatever floats his boat. If his dream doesn’t pan out; he’s always got that degree to fall back on.
As far as my spelling goes. Hey, give me a break. I graduated from Devry. 
As a young man, when I first entered college I was absolutely and completely guilty of this. I ended up dropping out.
After a few years in the “real world” and degreeless, this is why I am now back in school finishing my degree.
It still gets to me sometimes (see my thread about an English teacher I’m currently dealing with. He’s a pretentious, insufferable blowhard who required 5 of his own books for the course including a volume of his of his crappy poetry, and reads it aloud to us in class), but for the most part I’ve gotten over myself. I’m ready to do whatever the hell it takes, including sitting through listening to some asshole’s bad poetry and then writing an essay about the symbology in it. Still beats the fuck out of working at Domino’s.
This is quite true, but the converse is that things are oftentimes harder without a degree simply because tons of good paying jobs want one. It’s curious that it needn’t be related to one’s work, only that simply having it somewhere is somehow dispositive.
BTW, I made six figs last year, and know how to spell “aspirations,” “lotion” and “beautiful.”
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How many of them to left of the decimal? =P
I assumed by “college” we could also exclude trade school, community college or any other formal education after high school. Also the OP said he was “not mechanical or industrious”.
These are actual jobs I either worked before I had a college degree or happen to know don’t require a degree or much formal training. Who do you think works those jobs?
I guess another route if you know computers really well is to become some sort of IT contractor. Or maybe some sort of entrepreneur.
Quite frankly I’m sick of the attitude from people who didn’t go or didn’t like college who are conviced it’s just a rubber stamp for getting a job.
While there are plenty of successful people who never went to college, unless you happen to be particularly smart, industrious or entrepreneurial, lacking an advanced education limits your options.
There are also a lot of valuable life lessons to be learned from college that go beyond the coursework. If you can’t deal with a pretentous jerk of a professor how will you deal with some pretentous jerk of a boss? If you can’t figure out how to get along with a bunch of over-privileged frat-guy assholes in school, how are you going to get along with them in the real world when you have to deal with them as coworkers or clients or as your boss?
Also, a formal education gives you a positive sense of entitlement. I proved I’m smart and hard working enough to complete my program. I don’t need to show up those smug college boys or worry if my lack of a degree is somehow holding me back.
What the OP does is his own business, but “aerial gunner” doesn’t really have a lot of skills that transfer to the civilian world. I’m also not surprised the OP doesn’t really like college either. He’s at least 4 years older than a typical college freshman and I’m sure after flying in SAR helicopters in the military, much of it seems stupid and immature. I would just try different things to see what I liked. His grades are fine and he already knows he doesn’t like child psychology.
Well if you are flying a plane traveling west from New York at 500 mph and “B” is traveling east from LA…
Wrong. It may be the case that garbagemen are very satisfied with their jobs, but that doesn’t mean they are very satisfief period (ie, with life in general). Also, Working doesn’t contain any explicit comparison of job satisfaction across different jobs, so your idea of “the most” is not supported at all by the book.
Is he a Vogon?
Maybe he’s a Prostetnic in the Vogon Instructor Fleet :).
To the OP: how about a career in finance? You don’t need a degree to become a financial adviser, for example - in the UK at least, you can just take a number of below-degree-level courses while working and learning the trade. It’s reasonably interesting, IMO - YMMV.
I think in the US you just have to sponsored by a FINRA registered firm for the Series 7 exam. You would probably be doing mostly Boiler Room style cold-calling, if you are ok with that.
I worked the Art Department of several different printing firms before I got into my current “artist/stay-at-home-dad” gig. I was one of the only people there with a degree. Oddly enough, I was one of the lowest paid employees.
The printing press operators— pressmen— made considerably more money than me and none of 'em had been to college (although a few had been to a trade/tech school).
Yes, yes, poor people are unhappy, have bad teeth, smell funny, and reproduce too much. We know they are lacking in gumption because they are not rich, and we know the rich have gumption because they buy it at Whole Foods for $325 a pound.
I’ll add two more things on this thread. The OP states he is concerned about security more than high earnings. There is a school of thought today that security now comes more from flexibility than from specific skills. Some of the listed jobs pay well because they are currently done by skilled, often union or government, labor. That business model may not be stable in the long term. The people who figure out how to automate stuff are going to focus their attention on those jobs, because that’s where there’s money to be saved.
Especially if you have some military funding for college, you might want to take some of the classes that will lay a foundation for quick learning and flexibility throughout your career, whether or not you go for a 4-year degree. Only you can judge how much of this you already learned elsewhere, but these are some things I’d recommend learning before you give up on education -
How to write non-fiction to a college-level standard (journalism, business writing, could even be history classes that require research papers. Literary criticism, like a lot of English Lit 101, is not what I’m getting at here.)
At least one college-level math class. Statistics would be a good choice.
A semester of economics. Don’t take that first semester as gospel though. It’s usually extremely oversimplified.
A public speaking class.
If your college has a class that introduces students to the MS Office suite, that would also be a good bet. There’s a lot to those programs that people don’t usually learn on their own. Very useful if you’ll be going into business for yourself.
The idea is to get the groundwork to take information in, analyze it, and have it come out articulately in writing or speech. Because the people who have essentially never done any critical thinking and are apparently being blindsided by the disappearance of their factory jobs are in a world of hurt. This is the more practical side of college, rather than focusing on stuff that is interesting but doesn’t pay, like psychology or history.
That said, if what attracted you to child psychology was a desire to help kids with problems, there are jobs that don’t require a degree working with disabled children. They are stressful and don’t pay well, but are unlikely to be automated or offshored. The jobs would be something like this: http://online.onetcenter.org/link/summary/21-1093.00
You are in the wrong forum for this type of comment, sir, so I won’t respond in kind.
I hear this advice often but to be honest, I personally don’t know anybody that “fell back” to their degree as plan B after wiping out on Plan A.
Maybe football players with that didn’t get drafted into the NFL “fall back” to their degree–and become an accountant. I don’t know any athlete candidates so I can’t comment. But then again, the candidate had to go to college in the first place to be noticed by NFL scouts.
The people I know that failed at Plan A, the then try Plan B (another job) but that job has nothing to do with their degree, and then if that fails, Plan C also has nothing to do with their degree.
I’m not saying that the “fall back on your degree” advice is wrong but this contingency plan doesn’t seem to happen in my observations.