I am currently living in the Buffalo, NY area and as you may know its crappy. I am determined to get out of this area as soon as possible. But, with so many places to go I’m having trouble choosing a destination. So i ask you fine people: where should i go? I am a young single white guy with no degree who wants to get one from a school that is interested in helping me learn rather than just collecting my money. But for that i need to find some kind of menial drudgery that I can live off of while i go to school.
Well, there are SUNY schools all over the state with very cheap tuition for residents. (At least compared to private school standards.)
Stony Brook is an excellent research university with a beautiful campus and a short train ride to Manhattan. How are your grades and how much college work have you done already?
My kid’s about to graduate early from High School, move (from the frozen tundra) to California, live on a guy’s couch til he gets CA residency, and then take Community College or random classes.
Oh, he does have a goal: enjoy life.
You’re first move should be from General Questions to In My Humble Opinions.
samclem Moderrator
What do you want to study in school? What kind of physical and cultural environment to you like? What is your anticipated standard of living? You need to define some parameters.
Stranger
Yes i was too vague ill narrow it down.
Physical environment:
I want some place warm with no snow. I’m sick to death of driving in snowstorms or with ice on the road. that the inept highway workers here cant seem to clear up. Personally, I’d prefer something coastal, I lived in the midwest for three years and it still gives me nightmares.
Economic: As I have no real credentials , I’ll need to get a crap job quick to pay the bills that doesn’t involve digging ditches. A place with a good retail sector maybe or light industry. No construction or heavy stuff. If you see me swinging a hammer,Chances are I am being attacked by a zombie. And while i know it is a pipe dream, maybe a place where blood sucking landlords don’t charge $400+infinity a month just to rent a shitty cracker box apartment. High taxes aren’t an important issue for me.
Cultural: Somewhere with good libraries and museums. Maybe a lot of small theaters and the like too. Essentially a place with a strong artistic and intellectual base. I’m an anti theist, so an over abundance of religious types would turn me off.
MY plan is to get there by any means necessary (I’ll walk if i cant afford travel), find employment, and get some credentials so i don’t have to mop floors the rest of my life. The best place to do that is more important to me than anything above. except for the snow thing. I hate winter.
As for what i want to study, I haven’t the slightest clue, and therein lies the problem. I’m interested in a lot of subjects, choosing one is torture. I can hardly decide what to eat for dinner half the time. Maybe something more general at first if such a thing exists, that would give me a taste of different subjects and make a decision from there.
$400 doesn’t seem too horrible for rent, actually. To get something for less than that in a place with culture to boot might be difficult to find.
I hate to harsh on your buzz here, but your parameters are bordering on fantasy. Less than $400/mo for a small apartment in a warm, coastal environment probably isn’t possible except on the Gulf Coast, and you’re not going to find much in the way of high culture there. For the cultural aspects it sounds like you are looking for a medium-sized college town. I’d look at Ann Arbor, MI, Madison, WI, or Eugene, OR but none of those could be described as having warm winters. Honestly, while it isn’t the height of culture (and not my favorite place in the world), Albuquerque, NM sounds like it might suit you; it has a decent university, a growing arts and culture district, is still relatively cheap to live in, and while it ain’t coastal or always warm, it’s winters are brief and mostly sunny.
The “get some credentials so i don’t have to mop floors the rest of my life,” statement kind of bugs me, though. If your goal is merely to make money, you don’t need schooling or academic credentials for that, and in fact, it is counterproductive to your implicit goal of getting set up somewhere quick and living the good life on what a “crap job” offers. Instead, find an entrepreneurial niche and start hammering away (as most self-made millionaires have). If you actually have a need to fulfill some degree of intellectual imperative, then you should figure out what it is you like to study–biology, economics, pedagogy, occupational therapy, mathematics, art criticism, feng shui, et cetera–and start researching and visualizing where and how you can pursue this. Studying in a field just to make money just ensures that you won’t be dedicated or committed, and even if you have the focus to complete your studies and get your credentials, you won’t be any happier.
It honestly sounds like you’re trying to make a leap to get away from yourself and make a fresh start. The problem with that is that you always end up bringing yourself with you; you don’t get to leap into someone else’s body and history, and so you end up making the same mistakes you’ve made before because you recreate all the things that are fucked up about your life and then (unconsciously) have the same responses, hoping it’ll be different this time. In order to break out of that cycle you have to be mindful not just of what you’d like to do or how you’d like to live, but why you haven’t been able to get to that point previously.
However, getting the running fuck out of Buffalo, NY is a good first step for anyone…provided you’re not running to Terra Haute or Jersey City. (For affected residents of Indiana or New Jersey, I’m sorry I just delegated your favored municipalities as being worse than Buffalo; please accept my apologies and insert your favorite city to hate on in stead.)
I don’t mean to rag on your dreams, and if I’ve misjudged your intentions please feel free to ignore the above, but it sounds like you’re leaping into the future without looking at the path to get there. That rarely works, and while it can be interesting to take an unguided adventure it can also end up with you living in that crackerjack apartment, eating ramen and racking up debt while still not having a clue as to what you want to accomplish. Have a think, do some introspection, and figure out what you’re really interested in rather than what you can just do for money.
Stranger
Yeah I know that In fact i said it in my post. Grasping for hope: big mistake.
Stranger:
*The “get some credentials so i don’t have to mop floors the rest of my life,” statement kind of bugs me, though. If your goal is merely to make money, you don’t need schooling or academic credentials for that, and in fact, it is counterproductive to your implicit goal of getting set up somewhere quick and living the good life on what a “crap job” offers. Instead, find an entrepreneurial niche and start hammering away (as most self-made millionaires have).
*
I think you misunderstand. I want to go to a decent school and learn something worthwhile, but I am also realistic, i cant pay tuition or for books or have shelter and food without a job. What else is there to do? It would be stupid to be homeless and starving while pursuing an education.