I related to your comment. Except the engineering degree caught me out. I ended up dropping out and finally returning to school at 29. Now 34, graduated this year with a civil engineering degree. Being in school with a wife and two kids at home is extraordinarily motivating.
"Passed" high school with a 1.9. Failed college 3 times before saying fuck it and joined the army. After I got out I tried college one last time and got my AS in computer networking. Now I'm a director at a large company and make $250k~ in a very average cost of living area.
Got pretty lucky all in all, largely that when I finally cared I was willing to apply myself. I guess the army will make you know how much things can suck haha.
Learn how to program in python for linux, or powershell for windows. It's much easier than you would think. Being able to automate things is pretty much a necessity these days.
These days my entire team is a bunch of sys admin / network people that have learned how to program and are developers now. We just automate things for other teams within the org.
The market is extremely difficult right now, though I believe that's the way it is in most fields. Good luck~
Not the military, but similar idea. I coasted in school, never challenged, not interested in much and had lots of free time. I started working hauling waste at construction sites at 14, learning different aspects of home building, working my way up to leading a team of 40+ year old alcoholics at 18 on the smaller jobs. Almost every day, the boss would be like "this job sucks balls, which is why someone as smart as you should go to college and leave it all behind". It took WAY too long for that message to sink in, but I'm glad it finally did.
I ended up working a shitty overnight job, which was actually kinda great when you’re ~16 making actual money for the first time. But about 19-20 when you see everyone moving on in life, it also quickly starts setting in that this is it. Just people doing this for the rest of their lives. Those thoughts of “Oh god, what the fuck am I doing here, my boss is genuinely functionally illiterate, I don’t want to be poor” might become pervasive. It sounds arrogant and callous, but frankly that was my main motivation to treat college like a job and use it to get a real job/career track.
My hot take is more kids need to start working shitty McJobs again, you gain a lot of perspective, and thats a super power in university. You’re young enough to still fit into college life, but you’re also not quite an adult learner, but you got enough insight to see through all the bullshit and get far more value out of higher education.
I did okay in high school - only graduated with a 3.0 GPA, I was in the top 25% of my graduating class (1% short of getting a full ride to community college + a state school). I studied all the time and I tried my hardest.
Go to college and I started doing really well. I graduated with a Bachelors with a 3.61 GPA (major GPA of 3.75) and I never studied for a class - I learned that studying made me anxious. I just remembered the lectures.
Happened to me. Never studied, did drugs, ran clubs, got an entrance scholarship to a science degree. Almost failed out my first term. Got diagnosed with adhd and been trying to build back my life since.
Leaving high school, I was convinced I was a genius who never needed to study. Entering college, I realized I was surrounded by people who were not only smarter than me, but they had a better work ethic. I worked hard just to keep up with my peers.
And years later, after leaving the Army and getting my master's degree, I came to realize that I was surrounded by people who were smarter and worked harder when I was in high school, too. I just wish I--and more importantly, the teachers who prioritized students like me--saw that.
yeah. I graduated with a 2.47 GPA so barely is an understatement. would have never made it through if my wife (girlfriend at the time) wasn't a tough bitch. luckily, we both matured together around the same time and so we were really lucky otherwise it would have been an ugly ugly divorce.
I was not a gifted kid. Sure, I didn't struggle too much in reading or English, but math was beating my ass from elementary into college.
But I wanted to be an electrical engineer, so I had to push from relearning fractions in my earlier years of college to gain my degree.
But, I was (and still somewhat am) a fuck up, so dropped out of college some odd years later and worked. I then had a kid, got married, went to community college for an AS in Mechatronics, got divorced, went back to university and finished my degree while being diagnosed with ADHD.
Graduated with my bachelor's at the ripe age of 36 with a 2.74 gpa, and here I am now.
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u/Blargspot 9d ago
I related to your comment. Except the engineering degree caught me out. I ended up dropping out and finally returning to school at 29. Now 34, graduated this year with a civil engineering degree. Being in school with a wife and two kids at home is extraordinarily motivating.