Don't go to college (if you're in college, drop out)

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Waaghpowa

Needs more Dakka
Apr 13, 2010
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Ok, so here's my take on college and school in general.

There's this stupid perpetual cycle of bullshit with it:
You need money to go to school.

You need an education to be paid more than minimum wage.

But to get that education, you need money.

See what I mean?

Luckily for me I'm Canadian, so the government pays for a large portion of my education.

So yes, the system is bullshit, but your situation with your debt seems to be more of an inherent problem with America.
 

Skulltaker101

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Jul 20, 2010
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zelda2fanboy said:
In America you have to pay back your loan no matter what, even if you go bankrupt. Education loans are tied to you for the rest of your life. If you don't pay them, they'll garnish your wages. I didn't make any friends in college, had no fun, and never even got laid. Don't listen to your parents and don't listen to what TV tells you. It is a pack of lies.
Lies about lies, I tell you!

Now, I shall regail you with a story. Gather round escapists as I tell you a tale of great loss and a struggle to fight for the very thing our young protagonist had been aspiring to all of his life.

You see, as a young lad, I was not very good at school...essentially every aspect of my schoolwork confused and escaped me. This was the British state school system, I might add, where I was filed under I for Idiot, and allowed to fall behind. My mum and dad, hoping to encourage me, told me of the wonders and experiences one could have in university, particularly the experience of going to a college and staying there with other students. As an Englishman with an Australian citizenship living in New Zealand, I had a range of choices, as I worked harder and harder towards this very special goal, and eventually I chose the University of Adelaide.

I managed to get in, and landed myself a wonderful college indeed. O-week placed me amongst the loveliest folk I'd ever met in all my life. Homesickness was soon overcome. I began my first year, an apple-cheeked fresher who was ready to learn and work.

Then, disaster. My father fell ill with not one, but two lethal diseases, both slow acting. Motorneurone and Fronto-temporal dementia. I stopped sleeping, stopped being able to enjoy college, even though I could see that it was everything mum and dad promised. It was more like looking at a party through a window now.

Reluctantly, I returned to New Zealand. Had to be with my family and say goodbye to my dad. He suffered for months. I switched universities to Auckland to be closer to home, and there I stayed. I hate it there. It's nothing like where I was before, but I had to remain there.
Finally, towards the end of last year, my dad passed away. Simultaneously, the agency that handles student loans in New Zealand attacked me over having an Australian citizenship rather than a NZ one. And now, here I sit, preparing to go back again this year.

The moral of the story? I was sceptical about what college would be like. Was it, I wondered, the way it had been described in all of the movies? No, it wasn't. It was better, more special, more fantastic than I could have ever imagined it. I don't know where you ended up, mate, but I'm sorry that it could not be all you wished for. I assure you that neither is my current place. However, university and the colleges within it have the capacity to be the most awesome places and the time of your life that you will look upon with fondness and a great big smile. I know it, because dad certainly did, even when he was sick.

Thank you ladies and gentlemen.
 

BreakfastMan

Scandinavian Jawbreaker
Jul 22, 2010
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Nope, I will continue getting my Bachelors in CSS at a great Uni in an area of the country that has lots of jobs in my field.

Anyway, some good advice that people have given me:
-Have professional career-centers critique resume.
-Take practice interviews.
-Follow up on interviews. Follow up on applications. Bug the living crap out of them if you have too. Often, people will hire you just to shut you up.
-For God's sake, get to know people. Put yourself out there.
-Don't quit looking even though you have a (terrible) job.
-And above all else don't give up hope. Never, ever give up hope. The minute you give up hope, you have lost. You will never get that job you want. You will never become as successful as you want. If you keep on looking, you are bound to find something, even if it takes you 5 more years. Give up and, to quote the wise Willy Wonka: you. get. nothing.
 

Rule Britannia

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Apr 20, 2011
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College as in University? No you're dumb ¬.¬

You have gone to a bad college/university or you picked poorly in your major area of study.
 

ResonanceSD

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Dec 14, 2009
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zelda2fanboy said:
JoJoDeathunter said:
Making friends at uni/college is not difficult at-all, are you sure your lack of finding a good job isn't down to a lack of social skills rather than the course itself? I don't mean this in a offensive way, it's just with so many societies and clubs at uni, I find it hard to believe that anyone could find no-one to be friends with.
I don't even want a good job at this point. I just want to make more than minimum wage, even it's by 25 cents. You see, the new hires at my job who also do not have degrees (and one of which is not a high school graduate) make 25 cents more than me. I can understand having poor social skills could limit my chances at employment, but they can't really detect that sort of thing from a piece of paper. I've yet to get an interview.

I went here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_National_University

I studied this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marketing

I now work for these guys http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_Limited

Who are these guys. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_Corporation



Your OP could do with some details on which course/university you went to, and how you performed.
 

Shoggoth2588

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Aug 31, 2009
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I've had a handful of decent jobs as a college dropout. I can't agree that it's what everybody should do but giving the finger to college has worked out just fine for me personally.
 

Hap2

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May 26, 2010
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zelda2fanboy said:
I like hearing all everyone's blind negative judgments about me. That's really helpful.
Yet you don't consider the very positive advice that many are offering? People can only be as helpful as you are willing to act. There's a lot of good advice in this thread, but it's up to you to use it.
 

Iman Shumpert

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Oct 19, 2011
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What if we are currently doing an actual degree not something like Business Administration?
I doubt I could become a pharmacist without my current course no matter how much Breaking Bad I watch.
 

Canadamus Prime

Robot in Disguise
Jun 17, 2009
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zelda2fanboy said:
Don't care. I want my $11,000 back. I don't see why someone else should get scammed just because society says so.
So you didn't learn anything during you time at University/College that you spent earning your degree?
 

Wharrgarble

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Jun 22, 2010
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As an American, I happen to agree. Now a days, it's not what you know, it's who you know. I don't care HOW well you did in college, nepotism and the like will beat you out every time.

You want a job in this market? Get a skill. Plumbing, car mechanic, electrician, computer tech... Not a designer, but an honest-to-god tech. These are jobs people need, because your toilet doesn't care if it's the recession or not. It'll break down whenever it wants.

Go back to school once you have the money to pay for it. Taking out a loan unless you KNOW you can pay it off quickly is just asking for problems.

Dropping out of college and going to a vocational school for Court Reporting was the best damn decision I ever made. I already have a job lined up for when I graduate.
 

Tom Artingstall

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Sep 23, 2011
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Granted, a lot less people need to go to College/University than actually do. But I think the real value of it is as a growing up experience. You learn to live on your own, deal with other people, (hopefully) drink responsibly, self-budget, perform basic domestic tasks in your own place, etc etc.

Plus, I think a few years of living like a peasant with the wolf hounding at the door is something everyone should have to go through if they grew up in a fairly affluent environment. It's a good leveller. Black or white; man or woman; Christian, Muslim or Jew; All are equal in the eyes of the debt collector.

That alone is worth some debt.

TLDR - Live life at the bottom of the shit-heap for a couple of years, and you'll be nicer to the people who live and die there.
 

Canadamus Prime

Robot in Disguise
Jun 17, 2009
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Hap2 said:
zelda2fanboy said:
I like hearing all everyone's blind negative judgments about me. That's really helpful.
Yet you don't consider the very positive advice that many are offering? People can only be as helpful as you are willing to act. There's a lot of good advice in this thread, but it's up to you to use it.
Eh, you can lead a horse to water, etc etc.
 

CaptainKoala

Elite Member
May 23, 2010
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Yeah, I'm going to drop out of college because one guy on the Escapist told me to. Just because you had a hard time being successful after college doesn't mean the whole system is a scam.
 

Regiment

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Nov 9, 2009
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zelda2fanboy said:
Has anyone on this board who graduated after 2008 found a job that pays salary, utilizes their degree, and they didn't get it because they already knew people who worked there?
I got a job that pays salary and uses my degrees within two months of graduation. I'll be the first to admit that the timing was excellent (someone had just had a baby and left the position), but it worked out for me, and similar things have happened for most of my friends.

You had rotten luck, and I'm sorry about it. Don't get disillusioned. Maybe not today, but eventually you will be happy that you went to college and got a degree.
 

TheTim

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Jan 23, 2010
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That really sucks for you dude, maybe you should've chosen a better degree or career path.
 

zelda2fanboy

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Oct 6, 2009
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canadamus_prime said:
So you didn't learn anything during you time at University/College that you spent earning your degree?
If I did, I've forgotten it by now since I've never used my degree for anything. I did learn not to trust people.

Hap2 said:
Yet you don't consider the very positive advice that many are offering? People can only be as helpful as you are willing to act. There's a lot of good advice in this thread, but it's up to you to use it.
It's just nothing I haven't heard before, most of it being the claptrap I was subjected to while I was still in school. Go back to school. Pay someone to look at your resumé. Have you tried applying to places? You should apply to places. I have a good job. You should have a good job like me.

The saddest part of all of this is that I started this thread knowing full well I was wrong. The responses have been shockingly weak. I think I'll have to call it a night. This is getting depressing.
 

drthmik

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Jul 29, 2011
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this topic is actually really interesting in many ways and the situation that we are in is unique as far as I know. we are facing two opposing situations that have a real potential to screw people over.

First there is an inflation of degrees; which is to say that enough people are getting college degrees that their value has decreased. in today's job market your BA is not worth as much to our employers as our parent's BAs were to theirs.

simultaneously

there is and economic depression currently ongoing which can mean that there may be fewer jobs for grads and/or those jobs will pay less but it also means that the cost of getting a college degree is higher for us than it was for our parents

this doesn't mean that one shouldn't get a degree but it may mean that you need to get a MA before it's worth anything
 

Odbarc

Elite Member
Jun 30, 2010
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zelda2fanboy said:
Don't care. I want my $11,000 back. I don't see why someone else should get scammed just because society says so.
I dropped out, work minimum wage (20 hours average, for the times I get 40/week, I get 0/week later on).
Don't even have high school. I live a pretty minimum wage life style with no extravagant (useless) spending. I don't need or want much (or I may have continued school and gotten a job I wanted - of which none I do).

I can't argue that college is a requirement. Unless you actually GET a specific job that REQUIRES it (doctor?) - which graduation is merely the first milestone of the epic journey of actually acquiring the job you paid to learn how to do. So amidst struggling off a dept only adds to the stress.



What really sucks is that people who don't do their jobs great keep their jobs merely because of existing employment. I see so many useless people around work it's made me work half as hard for equal pay and I'm still the one of the hardest workers there. Definitely by comparison of a effort to pay ratio.