College

Would you say that your life or career choice started after you finished college or before? Did you have to wait years and years getting stuck with a job that doesn't have anything to do with what you went to school for, or did you end up with a career because you had connections? I'm only asking because college seems like the only hope to learn skills that you want and not have a crappy life or have to worry about jobs or income after.

Here is my view on college;

College is like any educational institution except you have to shovel out a crap load of cash for said education. You choose what classes you need/want to take and you go to lectures (or take an online course) for a semester. Semesters are broken up into fall, spring and summer. The first two years of college you either get your prerequisites for whatever major you are in/wish to be in. These first two years can also help you figure out what major you wish to be in if you can't decide.

You can live at home with your parents and do college or you can live with people/on your own. When you go the typical "kid leaves home to start their life" adventure, you learn how to live with various people (aka roommates) or you learn to live on your own. You may take on part-time jobs or full jobs and even learn how to socially interact in a college setting. Laundry, bills, dishes, partying, trying weed, getting drunk, maybe getting laid/joining a frat are all possibilities as well.

Tips for college:
- roommates can be your best friend or worst nightmare so be warned.
- dorm rooms are tiny.
- lock your doors every time.... I know this is silly, but this happens to everyone (I was stupid and thought, "oh what's the big deal, just got to do laundry down the hall") and shit goes down fast.
- balance study time and fun time (a lot of people get the boot for this one)
- keep up with your class credits, GPA, college finances because college are notorious for fucking your information up. I nearly got kicked out a few times because my school didn't document things properly and I had to go in and get it fixed myself. Print out documentation and ask for receipts too.
- Really take the time to figure out what you would want a degree in and what your opportunities would be with said degree. The more you know the better. Doctor may be an awesome career choice, but the schooling and cost is a bitch. Sociology is a fairly easy degree (depending on the college), but opportunities after that are limited.
- if you drink alcohol and have never had it before, be warned that you will probably act stupid and do stupid things. Even if it isn't during the first time you drink, believe me it will happen lol.
- wear condoms when you have sex; STDs are high in college settings as well as pregnancy.

I personally think college is a good thing to do if you are able to afford to go to one and feel motivated. It's a lot of work and a lot of it can be bullshit, but if you can figure out what you want to do through it all then I say just go for it. If you do two years at college and get 60 semester credits you can get your AA degree. Helps with job opportunities or switching to another school if need be.

Also nursing school is tough so you are warned if you ever felt like going that route (TTwTT)

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Should add, went to college and graduated with a BSN in nursing. Applying for my license and will probably do a residency (lower pay + job guarantee for however many years it says required under the contract + continued education). There are a lot of jobs for nurses, but until you get some experience under your belt they don't want someone fresh off the market, hence why I am going to do a residency.

College is good for multiple aspects of a potential career.

First, college allows you to pick a field of study, which you can change. Usually you will pick a field you plan to go into a career with. So then you gain knowledge on that field which will look good when applying for jobs.
Second, college degree looks better on a resume. A lot of places would rather hire a college grad over a high school grad because it shows some dedication and knowledge.

There are most likely more points but oh well. For me I never took advantage of other things college offered, like a career center. Let alone I was already working 40 hours and going to school full time so I didn't really want to stick an internship in there to, but as I see now I should have. The worse part of college even with the more knowledge and degree a lot of jobs still want you to have experience in that field, but dilemma is how do you get experience if you cannot get job in the field?

[color=#993300]It generally depends on the college you go to, how you do, and how much you spread yourself out, mainly the first and last. I know many who get recruited to major firms and businesses in college, but it really depends on building contacts as well as grades. That is, if you don't spend your time inventing stuff in college, which it is a good place to do.

These are all really helpful advices to take to heart and I thank all of you for replying, I've been struggling with the job centers and want to/should start college in January for something with computers for AA degree, theres three degrees or diplomas to choose from and I wanted to hear how everybody else is or has dealt with it. [I've got a really bad poor choice of words now]

More like your grammar is a bit off, should work on it some especially if you're doing something computer related.

Anyways an AA degree is the basic degree and should be easy to get, just make sure you get a copy of the degree so you can show proof that you got it.

Not sure what degree's or diploma's you're trying to choose from because there are multiple degree's out there.

I know mine is simple; you get your BSN for doing 4 total years and can get other various degree's after that (master's, PhD and doctorates... probably others but I'm not going back to school for now). My field offer's a lot of specialty licenses that you can apply for if you meet the qualifications and do whatever they ask of you (go to workshops, sign a contract to work in that field for however long, get certain licenses such as ACLS).

You'll just have to get a feel for what you like the most and which degree/diploma's will benefit you the most. Google is a good source of information on such things, I did most of my own research for my career choice because my academic advisers were terrible =P

I've been out of school since 2012 so give me a break haha ,yet I understand what you mean, there's only 4 choices(just checked now) for CIST in my community college which are, Internet Specialist Web Application Development, Programmer(which ive done a bit of actually kinda like it, Network Specialist and Information Security Specialist. Not sure where or if I could try out the other ones but I could read up about them. Just tired of struggling

No breaks even for the weary (I get it though, its cool lol) ;3

I'd say look at any deadline dates for each, what each choice want's from you (specialties, GPA, experience, etc), how much each would cost, how long each would take to complete, what job opportunities would be available afterwards, and what are you driven to try and do. The last one is a big factor because even if one of them is harder, if you are determined you can do anything.

Make sure to take a break every once and a while and have fun when you can. I know this can be difficult and it's hard when you are struggling to figure out your career and life, but everyone goes through this and all you can do is take things a day at a time.

First off, Thanks Misaki_Chi for your time, My community college lets you pay for courses and lets you choose when and how many you want to take so I assume it would depend on how many courses I take and I won't know/be able to pick classes till october 31st My interest peeked a bit when I saw they had a media and design degree(yet I've never had much of a imagination or creativity so I wouldn't know if that's for me) I personally just like being at a computer at all times not around alot of people and being given a job/task to do. Degrees would be 2 years at the least and a diploma would be year and a half i think not so sure to bee honest. Personally have no idea about the job part I think I would just have to apply for it on websites and hope.

It depends what you do. College has allowed me to get connections into the medical industry, and allow me to broaden my horizons toward how different people learn. The hardest part for me is getting over my old self. If you are lazy and don't want to work for a career, don't go to college. But if you want something out of your life, then go.

That's.. pretty messed up, i'm sorry to hear about it, truth be told I wanted to drop out too but my parents made me want to graduate and I kinda did too. [I'll add that to the poll]

I will also say if you are going for a degree always try to commit yourself to a bachelors over an associates. A few people I know went to school and wanted the quick associates degree and then off to the job world. Well Associates is basically pointless now since most companies want a bachelor or higher.

Personally my plan was to get a AA degree and get a small job with it then go for a bachelors later on but the main point for me would just to have something that would be stable, would give me income and I absolutely wouldn't hate doing it. I see fields like Network Specialist or Programmers making 70k a year yet having experience is needed, you could have a bachelors but still need experience just Ouroboros

You are better off going for bachelors right off the bat and then just get an internship around junior year so by time you graduate you will have that experience through internships.

I believe most of the colleges here are community colleges which only go to AA, some may go more yet, they are mostly too expensive or private schools kinda the same boat.

I gotta say I never really was serious about the whole college thing really. In my early years as a kid people say to go to college and do this and that, but you never really have a plan since all you do is get force fed with other things people tell you regardless if they were your parents, teachers, or even sometimes your friends as well. Sorry if I sound like a bummer, but I honestly don't have any dreams that I wanted to pursue for myself other than the things that people say I should do since it seems most of the time you worry about what happens now instead of later down the line when things are the way they should be as a kid until you slowly see reality. It's cruel in a way, but I think it could be fun to stretch out to create something new for a change.

We all get down honestly, people think there offering some helpful suggestions just for you to maybe start something and learn a skill or trade, if you don't mind it and don't know what youd like to do it would be better to do something instead of nothing but that doesn't mean you have to stick with it for the rest of your life. It just opens doors to new opportunity s and you becoming more independent , just my opinion

well I have connections with the previous jobs that I worked for. for me studying for college is to get your dream job but for some other people it's the chance of a life time to get a better life for his/her family. right now I'm on my 3rd year in college (I'm irregular though) getting BS tourism right now. but I'm having a change of heart on getting BSHRM or Culinary. for me finishing college with a diploma makes me a much more respectable person to the eyes of my relatives,families,friends and even people that I hate. I always was like the rebel in the family so right now i'm just finishing college. actually my dad was the one who is pushing me to finish my studying because he doesn't want my relatives to know that I've stop studying. right now when we are having family gathering I'm being forced to lie which I don't really give a damn. my dad is really an asshole. ugh.. hay nako.

I studied computer engineering, got my job in 2 months after graduation, I was not so lucky, my brother and some other friends got theirs like 3 months before graduation, so they didn't have to waste time.

since I study in Germany, tuition fee is relatively small, like 80€ for the whole semester, there were times when it got raised to 500€, but you can apply for reduction if you said you had no money.

As for my current job, I work as software developer, our firm develop a complete system (erp, crm, adserver integration) for some of the biggest online advertisement marketer in Germany. We are working mostly with microsoft's technologies, namely silverlight (I know this child will be taken off life-support in 2019), MS sql server, linq2sql, MS Visual Studios, language is obviously c# and xaml.

What I did, after I got my certificate I sent something like 10 job application online via email. I was invited to 5 interviews, most of them are actually looking for people with job experience min 1 year, so I had no chance, but the one was willing to give me a test before they decided to do anything, the test was to develop a small program on WPF to evaluate data from text files and display it on a datagrid with a specific configuration, the config file must be in xml. It wasn't hard I did it in 3 days and they accepted me afterward.

Even if my current job is a bit off from my study field, programming was a small part of it (we had electrical engineering, and digital system), and also mostly I wrote programs for hardware / real-time machines with c or assembler some people might call it low level programming. Even so having a strong fundamental knowledge allows me to learn any programming language in a month or two. So in the end I would say the college was well worth it.

sorry for grammars english isn't my native language.