For those that went to college...

[scott b]

You want to work in your trade? Stick it out for 4 - 6 more years and get a PhD or go to a trade school. You could also study accounting or engineering.

accounting rules, well if you like working with numbers.  i work for a sole-proprietor and could not be happier.  we bag on the corporate life and we go out and get drunk every once in awhile.  i get my records shipped to the office and he sits and listens to me rant and rave about such and lets me be who i am.  i told him in the interview this is what you are going to get but i am going to get the work done right and by the deadline.  two years later i have seen my income and retirement assets almost double and when i pass the CPA and go and get my masters in taxation both of those will increase significantly and i'm only 23.  i have more in savings now then most aging baby boomers do. 

just because you get a degree in something besides liberal arts doesn't mean you are going to become some fuck.  however, i am rather busy especially around tax deadlines and work seven days a week and 12 hour days so i could never do what Scott mentioned a few posts ago, but in the off months its a breeze and then you can always take a nice vacation.

[Old Kyle]

Scott S's post is right on.  The whole system has become quite dysfunctionalized by both people with dumb aims and people with good aims.

I still support the notion that more education is better than less.  It seems like it will never happen when you are in your twenties, but if you are smart and open-minded, eventually  you can find a path that you will at least reasonably enjoy while supporting you and your habits.  No matter how pointless or non-related to your skills your current employment situation is.

Of course, I went back to school to get an accounting degree so I would have a "profession" and it has worked out ok for me, similar to Scott b.'s experience.  Accounting does rule!

[SSR]

 
just because you get a degree in something besides liberal arts doesn't mean you are going to become some fuck.

I'll add to that with: Just because you have any degree (or none whatsoever) doesnt mean that you cant do something that is interesting and creative and make some money. I used to complain that my financial outlook wasnt too bright without a degree until it was pointed out to me that if I was to list the things I do and have done on a resume it would be much more impressive than a degree. I have been offered jobs working in political campaigns just on the strength of my writing (but the last thing I want to do is turn out political copy for pay. Too whorish for me [and I have the luxury of turning things down]). What sealed it for me as to how easy it was too get different work was when I pitched to the local NGO environmental umbrella group that I do a monthly newsletter/paper for them. One lunch with the head of it and I had a $2000/month budget, $1000 for me. It would have taken me all of 20 hrs a months worth of work. Ahhh the world of could have been... Dear Old Mom got cancer and I had to attend to her. By the time she recovered the chance had passed. 

I dont want to sound like an "up from bootstraps" kinda a guy, but if you get creative you can find and do many interesting things for money. I mean The Hun has plenty examples of the things you can do for money.

One thing about the whole decline of liberal arts/college. Used to be that the basic undergrad degree was a year of Greek, a year of Latin, history, lit, basic science and that is about it. That would give you the TOOLS to expand your mind and educate yourself. The assumption was that all you all need is fuel for that brain of yours. Nowadays it seems like a radical notion, though it is one at least as old as Socrates.

[Mitch]

BA in modern literary studies from UC Santa Cruz.  Since then, I've been a test technician at a bullshit internet start-up, a clerical/temp hack, an intern at a now-defunct record label, a longshoreman and (currently) a manager at a domestic shipping company.  I had aspirations of going back to school immediately, but...

[SSR]

an intern at a now-defunct record label

Thanks for the "back rubs"!

[goneoffdatlean]

I gotta agree with Scott, creativity is the key.  My sister hasn't even graduated business school yet she gets all kinds of lucrative offers.  She even got a consideration to work overseas in China and India.  Needless to say she is the good one and I am the fuckup.  She tries to help me think of stuff but I'm too unmotivated.  Oh well.

[Insensitivemonster]

I think I was the bottom 10% of my high school class.. I nearly didn't graduate at all.. dropped out of technical college at 19, and just fucked off for many years (I worked in restaurants, gas stations.. (I was a gas station attendent for at least four years), all kinds of shitty jobs..)

I went back to college when I was 26.. got some good grants because I was only making something like 7,000 year (2.13/hour + whatever tips I actually reported)

I was in school for less than 2 years.. took some computer classes and got hired at the computer help desk at the university I went to (friend got me the job). That job was an awesome opportunity, because of the training I received on the job. I decided to get the hell out of Indianapolis once and for all, and started job hunting in the bay area.  I moved here in 1999. Got some good jobs, lost some good jobs during the dot bomb.. and then was lucky enough to have amazing ex-bosses who helped me find enough work to get by when jobs were really hard to find.

I don't have a degree, but have enough experience that I can still apply for jobs where they want folks with a degree (and sometimes even get the job). I could make a lot more with a degree, but figure I've done pretty well with the limited education that I have.

Going to school is a great idea.. but try and get some experience in your field at the same time.

oh.. I failed to mention.. while in college, I maintained a 3.98GPA. Highest Honors on my first semester as a returning student... not so shabby for someone who nearly flunked out of high school

[carlos]

Florida A&M University
BA in History and Geography with a minor in Spanish, graduated with a 3.2 which is pretty remarkable considering how much weed I smoked and classes I missed.  My major is pretty much worthless but I like studying history so I'm ok with that.

Now I'm a TA at a high school but I'm going back to school to get my teaching certificate and after that getting my master's so I can teach at the college level.

Carlos...Is classical civilizations, a degree in ancient history....if so, that sounds pretty cool..

yeah, it's sort of like an ancient history degree, but it specifically focuses on ancient greece and rome, and instead of just history, it's also art history, architecture, literature, religion, politics, language, culture, etc...  it was pretty awesome, and berkeley has a really good program for it.

[kevin e]

BA in Japanese from U of Florida, almost a MS in Construction Management from Colorado State. I definitely agree with Scott. My post-grad work is what got me a job, but my undergrad is what taught me how to think and see things analytically. Plus Florida is a lot better school. However, have fun explaining you went to college to expand your horizons to someone interviewing you who was a total pre-professional non-liberal arts student.

[SinglesGoingSteady]

"Everything wrong with using a people's past exclusion as a reason to exclude others"

I have to agree that this is a huge problem, especially in modern English Depts. It's fine to focus on minority lit, but it's ridiculous to not even bother talking about people like Hemmingway, Fitzgerald, etc, because they are "dead white men". Happens alot...totally skewered perspective.

I disagree with you about teachers not promoting some sort of liberal idealogy, though. Going back to school in this administration, I have heard more liberal propoganda shoved down my throat than I can even detail. 3 out of the four or five classes I take a semseter have a teacher with some sort of political bent that they throw in, and they do in off the cuff comments, not by injecting it into the actual lecture. I dunno how prominent that was when you went to college but it's huge now (at least here, at least under Bush) and I'm told that it was pretty big in the Vietnam era.

Wether or not that "brainwashing" works is questionable; most people get their politics from their parents, anyways. You see kids taking a wide assortment of "mulit-cultural" this and that and they still spew out "Last Sons of Kypton" and "kyke" at parties. So whatever.

[goneoffdatlean]

Florida A&M University
BA in History and Geography with a minor in Spanish, graduated with a 3.2 which is pretty remarkable considering how much weed I smoked and classes I missed.  My major is pretty much worthless but I like studying history so I'm ok with that.

Now I'm a TA at a high school but I'm going back to school to get my teaching certificate and after that getting my master's so I can teach at the college level.

Carlos...Is classical civilizations, a degree in ancient history....if so, that sounds pretty cool..

yeah, it's sort of like an ancient history degree, but it specifically focuses on ancient greece and rome, and instead of just history, it's also art history, architecture, literature, religion, politics, language, culture, etc...  it was pretty awesome, and berkeley has a really good program for it.

That sounds like a badass program.  Are you gonna get your master's and PhD...I thought about it but I can't figure out what exact area to study.

[carlos]

yeah, i definitely want to go back to grad school, but considering i just barely finished my undergrad, i'm gonna wait a few years and then figure out what i want to study then.

[Yon Yonsen]

 "Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence.  Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent.  Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb.  Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts.  Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.  The slogan 'press on' has solved and will always solve the problems of the human race.'"  Calvin Coolidge, when asked what advice he'd give future Terminal Boredom readers.  

[davehyde]

Western Connecticut State University, degree in photography and painting.  Sadly, I haven't painted since graduating (I hope to change that) and I have no interest in commercial photography (and got the degree just minutes before the whole world went digital...talk about timing).  Needless to say, none of my real world jobs have been art related.  I've been a corporate jobber making phone calls to real estate brokers following up on paperwork, I've worked in an ebay consignmenr store (as a photographer & shipper, so I guess the degree kinda, sorta was applied, but not really), I've worked in a record store, and now I'm back to the office life stuffing envelopes for 37.5 hours a week.  It's not the most engaging or fulfilling job I've had.

[goneoffdatlean]

Coolidge was a pretty shitty president as far as I remember.