At MHS, there used to be this evil economics teacher named Mrs. Miller. Legend had it, that she intimidated Michael Dell to the point where he wanted to drop out of High school. Years would go by,and not a single donation was ever made to MHS. As soon as Mrs. Miller was fired in 2002,the dell shipments came flying in. The point is.... if you are a genius, then you don't really need college. However, I feel that college is a place to discover yourself, a place to become a better person. Stay in school and always wear protection!
I work in IT so I'm in one of those fields where a college degree doesn't mean nearly as much as experience. I'm really glad I quit college after a year and got into the work force. That was 8 years ago and I don't regret it one bit. I think it depends on what you're looking to do for a career. If it's IT, I'd say quit right now and start working. If you want to be a teacher or doctor, well you should probably finish school.
I kinda wish I had done that. I have a degree in IT now and in one way it feels great, in another way it sucks because I have no real experience so I've been looking for non-IT jobs.
The thing about a degree is that by the time you're in a position where you really need it, it's almost too late to get one. I was lucky I could finish mine. I was doing the IT thing and saw no reason to get those last few credits, but then I decided I wanted to go to law school. D'oh, had to finish the degree. It sucked. My advice, suck it up and finish. The real world ain't all that and you're missing nothing by staying in school. You never know when you're going to have that perfect opportunity, and not having a degree will keep you from obtaining it. Besides, the way things are going, not having a degree twenty years from now will be like dropping out of high school today.
Yeah man, that does suck. I know so many people that got a Comp Science or MIS degree, and since they have no experience they have to start off on the help desk just like everyone else. Experience is everything in this field.
If you're good at sales, social networking, have leadership skills, or have some mechanical or artistic aptitude, have a financial support system (ie parents) and, on top of any of those things, have a clear plan about what you want to do, then you can skip college or any other type of trade school. Otherwise, it might be tough getting a decent paying and rewarding job before 30. On the flip side, I think something like 60% of high schoolers are going to college now, so my little Cougar High BBA woun't be worth diddly soon enough. Your problem is not college, it's not knowing what you want to do afterwards. Look at your interests, even your most frivolous (sports, pop culture, music, politics, fashion?), I GUARANTEE YOU there's a major and career field that accomomdates that. There's also probably a book, magazine and newspaper dedicated to it, and you should be reading all of them. And you should be online every day looking for internships. Every day. And you should be tweaking your resume for different industries, and writing and re-writing cover letters....
I'm into refining in a very very very indirect way. What I do has benefited tremendously with the increase in oil prices. I got my degree at a midwest university and petroleum was the farthest thing from my mind. When people in my industry first find out I have a BSChE, they look at me like I'm crazy. Makes me laugh. My career path is bizarre to say the least.
Yeah, I'm working help desk right now and it sucks the life out of me. I hated programming and am horrible at it, I have no idea how I made it through college. That seems to be what most of the jobs are these days.
I hate programming too. I work on the infrastructure side, not development. There are plenty of systems admin type jobs out there, you just have to work your way up to them. I started in 99 doing desktop support and didn't get up to the well paying admin type jobs until I was working for 4 years.
I worked for a little refining company that is owned by the Venezuelan government for my first 3 years out of college. I recently changed companies and got into commodity chemicals. (By the way, I do process control, so changing industries isn't hard.)
i'd honestly rather be a ball boy for the rockets and make 40k a year rather than sit on my butt and do computer stuff for 100k
People with college degrees, on average, earn about $1 million more over their lifetime as people with high school education only. http://www.census.gov/prod/2002pubs/p23-210.pdf I started working on enterprise and financial data warehouses right out of college in the IT field as a developer. Of the 50 or so people I work with regularly with now, only 3-5 have no college degrees and all of them but one are admin assistants. The one that got hired with no degree got in because she knew someone, and while she is fairly competent, her earnings are much lower than everyone else.
Well, the best solution for a guy in your situation is to goto the career center and let them help you find an internship or part time job. If you hit it off from there you can become a part time student or quit altogether. The IT intern horror story is because those people didnt go out to find work or research projects to go along with their learning. Ive been there. You need work experience if only to put your abstract learning into real world exp. Then you can better plan your decisions from there.
good question. i'm in college now...it can be very frustrating, i have found myself a few times asking myself why am i doing this? i've switched majors a few times, which isnt to big of a deal. it might make me be in college another year...but it happens. also just thinking about how much i'll owe back in loans is frightful as well. i also know a few people who have jumped right into the workforce...and it seems to be working out for them. then again they're still with parents and arent making the greatest sum of money...still at times it seems it would be better than school. all in all i've decided i need to stick it out, and take the advice from people who have stuck it out and just go from there.
