- Joined
- Jun 6, 2017
- Messages
- 3,371
I skipped trade school and college 
but seriously I began college at a major university but couldn't cut it due in part the generic and for me terrible advice of the advisor ending up with a bad schedule and flunking out. After that wasted year I began taking classes at a local community college back home and worked so it took ~3 yrs to complete my AAS, Computer Information Systems, and after which I couldn't find work and finally accepted an offer from a friend of the family to work in his companies IT department. It was more adjacent to what I studied, which was mostly computer programming, but similar to some side work I had been doing since I was in my teens. IT wasn't bad but the hours, stress, and "disrespect" suck I say "disrespect" with quotations because it is mostly that no one values IT we are blamed for what ever problem we are called to fix so fixing it generally isn't thanked and when all our work is done right it looks like we are doing nothing. So to everyone here who has an IT staff they occasionally rely on trust me when I say they do so much more than you probably think and get so little thanks for it all. I spent almost 10 years doing that before moving into a less IT specific role, more an IT liaison now, so things work out funny I spent time on a degree I never really have used. I don't regret my time spent on my degree it does have its uses that come in handy but so many things in hindsight could have been done differently but who knows where I would be today if it had gone differently.
but seriously I began college at a major university but couldn't cut it due in part the generic and for me terrible advice of the advisor ending up with a bad schedule and flunking out. After that wasted year I began taking classes at a local community college back home and worked so it took ~3 yrs to complete my AAS, Computer Information Systems, and after which I couldn't find work and finally accepted an offer from a friend of the family to work in his companies IT department. It was more adjacent to what I studied, which was mostly computer programming, but similar to some side work I had been doing since I was in my teens. IT wasn't bad but the hours, stress, and "disrespect" suck I say "disrespect" with quotations because it is mostly that no one values IT we are blamed for what ever problem we are called to fix so fixing it generally isn't thanked and when all our work is done right it looks like we are doing nothing. So to everyone here who has an IT staff they occasionally rely on trust me when I say they do so much more than you probably think and get so little thanks for it all. I spent almost 10 years doing that before moving into a less IT specific role, more an IT liaison now, so things work out funny I spent time on a degree I never really have used. I don't regret my time spent on my degree it does have its uses that come in handy but so many things in hindsight could have been done differently but who knows where I would be today if it had gone differently.
)
). BUT, that is me. I know a couple - one is chief of neurosurgery at a big local hospital, the other is president of a local college. One of their kids just simply said they did not want to go to college - was not interested at all (that took a while for my friends to understand). I know well several people who practice trades (carpentry, tile laying, painting, general "handyman" work), and they really enjoy what they do (both from the perspective of seeing a job well done, as well as the personal freedom working for themselves gives them). Several of them started out as practicing (diploma) engineers in industry - and decided that just was not for them. There seems to be a lot of satisfaction and pride in starting a job and seeing it done, and done well, to the end. We also know, or know of, quite a few physicians and lawyers who went in to their profession only because of the apparent lure of "big money". Many of them are really, really unhappy doing what they do.
