originaly by:AudreyK
But that is my point. Why spend all the time going to school if you arent going to use it? If you are only going to make $8 an hour why bother? There are plenty of jobs that you need a little college to do. There are also plenty of jobs that you dont need any college to do.
That is true. I understand your point. You, and many other people, are doing just fine without college. If you’re making enough money to live and are happy doing your work, that’s great.
I know people with degrees who are miserable. Some of them make great money. Some of them hate what they’re doing.
NinjaChick needed to hear different opinions because there isn’t just one answer.
Umm… Burner… I can make $10 an hour designing webpages… That’s not great money, but it’s good for where I’m at. I’m still going to go to college.
Why?
Maybe because I want to make $70 or 80k a year. Maybe I want to leave a lot of options available for my life. Maybe I want to have the freedom to explore the world when I retire instead of having to work until i’m 80. Just maybe.
$30k is jack in today’s world. You can barely live off of that, muchless save for retirement. I personally don’t want to work for the rest of my life.
You know NinjaGirl. I was going to take all AP classes my junior year (Next year), but I decided, life isn’t about grades. Grades may be an important part of your scholar career, but in the real world, grades mean didly squat. 20 years after you graduate from college, all they’ll care about is whether you have a degree or not. They won’t give a rat’s ass about your GPA. I’d rather live, and enjoy high school, then just stress myself out, to the point where I can’t take it anymore. There’s just no point. I honestly don’t see the point of stressing myself out over grades that are more or less irrelevent in the long run.
My parents even say, “you’ll learn more in college then you’ve learned in your entire K-12 experience.”
The most important thing in life is to be happy. If you don’t think going to school will make you happy, then don’t do it. If it will lead to happiness do it. It really depends. It’s all relative, and it ultimately boils down to what will make you happy? Do what makes you happy.
Do you have a reason for saying this? I only ask because I have heard it in passing before and it makes me a bit concerned. You see, I plan on starting school this summer. On the way to a masters degree. I will be 26 when I start school.
Also going community college for all my pre-professional years.
Advice is free, NinjaChick, so take it for whatever it is worth. You sound like you’re just a little burned out on formal education. You also sound like you’ve got a lot of common sense. Nothing wrong with taking a break from education after high school. Life can be a great educator, if managed wisely and often makes college more enjoyable and appreciated once it’s YOUR decision.
Age has nothing to do with it. It’s when you’re ready, that counts. I “finished” college at 22. Went back at 35 and got another degree at 50. Just remember, whatever you do, make it worthwhile and not just self-serving or “fun”.
For those who concentrate on the “party-party-party” mind, they are simply fools, and usually are the ones who end up at a dead end in life. ::mad: It’s a waste of time, money, and can be more trouble than you want to ask for in the long run. :eek:
Sounds to me like you’re already looking for something a little more satisfying. College will always be there and you’re not going to learn life lessons in college. :rolleyes: But if you’re not sure, wait. When you’re ready you’ll know it and you’ll truly want to attend college. College should be reserved for those minds hungry to learn. 
And there are a lot of financial programs to help an adult learner when your ready to finish.
Talk to your counselor, teacher, or professor you trust, not a bunch of strangers that don’t really care what you do. Just remember, any credits you earn “now”, will have a time limit, so don’t wait too long. Good luck to you:)
I love college. I’m just an average student, B’s and C’s, but I’ve met tons of people and made more friends in eight months than I did in eight years prior.
I’m majoring in English, and I like to write as well. I have plenty of confidence in my writing ability, and yet by going to college and being able to take classes I am able to learn more and more on how to make myself an even better writer. I am not necessarily dead set on an ‘English major’ job, but its a really great major if you like to read and write.
My life is taking a turn for the better. Even during the hard times, the frustration, I know I am making an investment in my future.
Well I regret going to college straight out of high school since I think it caused an undiagnosed 6 year bout with clinical depression in me.(And let me tell you that was no fun. Actually I now want to go back since I’m alot more serious now and get into medicine.) BEfore anyone asks yes I actually graduated with a degree but seriously my first school did alot of damage to me.
Ninjachick if you really don’t want it or you’re really not ready I’d say don’t go.(Of course it may be harder as the rest have said if you’re older and decide to go back since you may not be able to do it full time.)
One thing to remember about going to a bigger college where the tuition seems extremely high is that your financial aid is determined by the price of the school and what your family is able to pay.
I can tell you from personal experience that going to a large, well-reknowned school for your choice of program on a tiny wallet is possible, because I did it. I went from being a big fish in a very little pond to being a scholarship big fish in an enormous pond, and it wsn’t that difficult. The most important thing to do is get accepted to the school and file your FAFSA.
When I applied to Pitt, tuition room and board was running $10K plus for one year, and at the same time I was also applying to a private university at which tuition alone was $20K per year. I filled out and filed my FAFSA, which took income information from me and my parents and figured out that our out of pocket contribuition to both of those schools would be $2,500 per year, and that I would borrow another $2,500 for the first year in the form of a subsidized (government pays your interest as long as you’re a full time student) Stafford Loan.
I went to a very tiny (400 students) no-name high school where an IB was not an option and AP was virtually non-existent, so I never thought that I could compete for scholarship money with students who had more advantages than I did in their high school educations. Damn was I wrong.
I applied to Pitt, Penn State, Washington and Jefferson and just for shits and giggles, Harvard. I got accepted at all of my choices, and offered scholarship money from all but Harvard. I narrowed the selection down to Pitt and Washington and Jefferson because I wanted a school that was more in a city setting, and scholarships were important to me. So there I was, this kid from a coal patch in Pennsylvania, having been offered W&J’s Presidential scholarship (full tuition) and getting $4K a year from Pitt as a nominee for a Chancellor’s scholarship which put me in the running for a full ride academic scholarship. It blew my mind that a kid who came from schools that couldn’t afford up to date books, schools that didn’t have enough supplies to let everyone use a microscope in advanced biology, schools that didn’t offer four years of any foreign language but Spanish, schools where the math department consisted of one teacher, could compete with 30,000 people some of whom came from the best high schools in the country.
It can be done, NinjaChick, so please don’t think that there’s no way you’d get financial aid at a big school with a well-known name. If you want to go, do it. If you want a ‘name school’, don’t settle for somewhere you won’t be happy. The financial aid department exists to help you figure out how to fund it all.
Best advice I can give you is to apply where you think you’d like to go, now, and talk to their financial aid. Things may be more possible than they seem.
¿Por qué no? Aunque te recomiendo viajar a algún país hispano-parlante. Despues de todo, yo tengo un IB en inglés y te puedo asegurar que un buen viaje a Yanqui Landia me haría mucho bien. 
Moreover as many already told you it is a great experience. I juss turned 23 and in march I will be out of college. Let me tell, I met a lot of people from a lot of different backgrounds. I am not the same person I was 5 years ago.
And you’ll learn a lot and that my friend is your most important job here on earth.
Granted college is not for everyone. If you go and realize you are one of them you loose nothing. But (insert in here Henry V speech at Agincourt but change Saint Crispin’s day for college)…
you get the idea
IB didn’t teach me the proper use of commas
Here’s some of the positions I was qualified to to do (and actually did) before getting my college degree:
-Cosmetics warehouse picker/shipper
-Cardboard box factory worker
-Tree nursery laborer
-Furniture mover
-Fast food restaurant employee
-Mail room clerk
-Baseball MVP ballot counter (and I don’t even like baseball)
-Injection molding machine operator (ironicly, I made the “$” sign key for calculators)
-Postage meter tester (basicly, 8 hours a day stamping envelopes)
-Grocery store bag-boy
-Busboy
Doesn’t matter what you think you are qualified to do. No one will hire you without the degree.
Another thing…just because you might write good.er…well compared to your high school peers does not mean that you will kick ass in college. You might actually learn something
That’s just something lame people say. The truth is that many people take a “work hard play hard” attitude. It’s important to maintain a ballance. There is, after all, more to life than spending all your time in the library so you can get some job that demands you work 100 hrs a week and travel 100% of the time.
So what do you guys think about the worth of a degree just as a piece of paper, without any of the side benifits (sex, drugs, and rock and roll)?
I’m a junior in college, and in terms of pretty much everything besides the degree I’d be happier if I quit. I don’t like the people, I don’t like the classes, and probably the most profound thing I’ve learned since I was a freshman is how much school doesn’t teach you. In fact, in terms of an actual education, I’ve learned much more in my time lurking on the SDMB than in classes. I’m in a subject area (music) that, while I wouldn’t say doesn’t interest me, is definitely something that I will not be pursuing as a career. What I don’t know is how much hell I should be putting myself through for the next year and a half to get a piece of paper with my name on it. I’m not really sure what I would do if not school. At this point, “cleaning stuff, assembling stuff, or driving stuff” sounds just peachy (maybe not cleaning stuff), but I’m sure that wouldn’t last too long. Maybe I just need to take some time off to figure out what I would want to do, but no matter how much time I take off, I doubt I will look forward very much to coming back, so it might just be better to get this whole thing out of the way and not have to worry about it. I’m a little bit lost at the moment.
Thoughts?
Oh, and how much do you think grades matter, as opposed to just the degree?
(I need an excuse not to go to my 4:00 class)
Having a degree doesn’t mean you can’t get those jobs. Not having a degree does mean you can’t get jobs requiring a degree. In today’s economy you want to increase your options, not reduce them.
Not much to add - just wanted to add my vote in the “go to college” camp.
In short, I generally believe it is desireable to keep as many options open as possible. And IMO&E college opens up more options for you. And 17-18 is a little young to start limiting your options.
Also, IME, once you get a job, you increase your marketability in that specific field, but lose a lot of flexibility for alternatives. It is all too easy to get compartmentalized in the job market.
College is a great place for making contacts. Profs are fantastic references. You can get leadership experience in a variety of organizations, and you can publish in various fora. And, there is a great safety net. The clock gets rewound every semester.
Re: the cost, look into teaching and research assistantships, which come with a stipend and often a tuition waiver. Communty college can be a great way to extend your $. Get your basic requirements out of the way cheaply. Some colleges are easier to transfer into as a sophomore or junior, than to be accepted into as a freshman.
Once you get a job and start making some $, it will be that much harder to go back to being a penniless student. And given a little time away from tests and papers, I would assume it might be hard to go back. I used to be an awesome test-taker. Now, at 42, I couldn’t imagine sharpening up the old #2.
Applying and deferring sounds like a great option for you.
by David, God of Frogs
The fact that you made it this far and have nothing to look forward to except the degree is even more reason for you to hang in there until graduation. If you quit now, all your work up to this point would have been in vain. Since you can’t even say you had a whole lot of fun or gleaned a lot of knowledge or had any crazy memorable adventures, at least get something out of your college experience. Even if it’s just a degree, that’s better than bailing out with nothing at all to show for it.
I know how it feels to hate the place where you are, but just keep your eyes on the future. Doing so may be the only thing that keeps you sane between now and graduation. Tell yourself daily that soon this college thing will be behind you and you’ll finally be able to do what you want to do. Take it like bad medicine and be grateful that you’re not fumbling around aimlessly on the streets. In the end, you’ll be happy you didn’t quit.
It depends on what you’re planning on doing with that degree. For me, grades mattered a lot, because I was going on to professional school. But for music majors (I presume that is what you are?), they might not matter that much.
To be on the safe side, go to class.
I totally agree with this.
I think I was at the same point - Junior year - music major - going through one of those awful stress periods and the only thing I wanted to do was play in the band I was in at the time. I wanted to quit music school so I could concentrate on my music :dubious: . School was looking pretty irrelevant. My folks talked some sense into me and I stuck it out and I’m extremely glad I did. The papers were submitted, the tests were taken, the performance was performed, and the feeling passed.
As far as the worth of the degree is concerned - I used my music degree to get a job as a clinical research assistant in a cancer research hospital.
Just want to weigh in with my “go to college” advice.
I myself took a year off and travelled - and then, I worked. I did not enjoy manual labour, low pay, and lack of respect. So I went to University, and I really enjoyed it (of course, the fees are lower up here in Canada). I enjoyed the people, I enjoyed the intellectual stimulation, I enjoyed the whole atmosphere of serious learning among motivated people - so different than high school! However, I was still quite unsure as to what I wanted to do - so after I graduated, I worked some more (to pay off my debt) and went to law school. I work as a lawyer now.
I still keep in contact with several friends from high school. Some went to university; others did not. Without exception, those who did not go on to university regret this fact. Soon, they are caught up in needing a paycheque (most find out that their parents have quite limited patience with supporting them). Soon, they meet up with significant others and want to settle down - so taking three or four years off and running up huge debts becomes less and less possible. Soon, “real life” traps them.
My best buddy in high school sounds a lot like you, NinjaChick. She hated the regimentation of high school, and never went to college. We are still good friends. She now lives in a single room in a basement, and struggles to get by. We both work very hard, but I earn around four or five times the amount she does. I am no more intelligent or creative than her.
So from my experience, the upside is - it is a great experience in and of itself; it provides opportunities for getting a better job; and even if you end up doing something totally unrelated, it opens doors to other opportunities. The downside is it is expensive, and takes several years of your life.
To say “I shouldn’t bother going to college because I won’t ever use my degree” is assuming a lot. You have roughly 40 working years in you after you graduate from college. The days when you could work for a single company your entire life are long gone. But regardless of how many jobs you hold in your lifetime, the question remains: how can you know you won’t ever use your degree? How can you know that a degree won’t help you get promoted, get promoted more frequently, give you greater credibility, or make you stand out?
The answer is you can’t. You never know what life and employers will ask of you. Given that, isn’t it better to have a degree and possibly not use it, rather than not get one and likely regret it? Isn’t it preferable to have something that gives you more options and makes you more appealing to prospective and current employers?
You seem to be resigning yourself to making $8 an hour. That’s fine if you’re single, but what if you need to support a family? What if you want or need more money? You could get another job. But wouldn’t it have been easier had you earned your degree and got a better job that paid more money in the first place?
David, God of Frogs– Before you throw in the towel, try to see if there’s more you could be doing with the college experience. Try taking part in a variety of other things, whether it be classes outside your major that sound fun or interesting, optional and more challenging classes, campus organizations, or social activities.
I always tell people that if you really don’t want to go to college you probably shouldn’t, because doing well in college takes a lot more work than doing well in high school and you’ll be either miserable or an academic failure if you hate being there. However, you don’t seem to really not want to go to college, and given your high school background you could probably do well without toiling over the books too much. You’ll also have the advantage of having some college credits already. My school didn’t have any sort of AP program, so I’ve had to get all my credits as an actual college student! If I’d had some coming in, I could have taken lighter course loads or maybe even graduated early.
In terms of experience, you can have all kinds of wonderful experiences in college if you keep an eye out for them. And I don’t just mean drinking and sex (my college career has been devoid of both) or even book learnin’, although the latter shouldn’t be underrated. Big universities generally offer the most extensive extra-curricular activies, but even at a small private liberal-arts school like mine I’ve managed to meet foreign heads of state, have a formal lunch with the ambassador from Bangladesh, make friends from all over the country and all over the world (ranging from working-class girls who are the first in their families to go to college to honest-to-goodness nobility), be a DJ on campus radio, be a reporter and graphic artist for the campus newspaper, design websites for various campus groups, take a two-and-a-half week study tour of England, sing karaoke, act in a play, organize an annual drag show, fold origami, dress up in a full kimono with all the trimmings, see and hear all kinds of plays, guest speakers, poets, musicians, dancers, comedians, and other performers, and much, much more! There’s little or nothing in my list that I definitely could not have done if I weren’t in college, but it would have required a lot more time, money, and effort on my part. Being in college made it easy.