Anyone Else Here in College? I Am and It Sucks

GI Bill, commuted, and pay for grad school out of pocket.

Wife did the FAFSA thing and we ended up with like $50K in loans. It’s worked out well for her and she’s more than made up for it in earnings at this point, but I’d figure your shit out before you get too deep in debt.

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Agree, I have way too many friends deep in debt because they changed majors like kids in the beginner forum change workout plans.

I lived with parents while in community college. During university, I lived out of my car part of the time and had an apartment the rest. I graduated without debt, because of scholarships and working full time. (It helped I didn’t pay rent while living in my car)

Dude. Samsies. All around. Stop it haha.

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College - best five and a half years of vacation!

Went to a state school back in the 80’s, tuition, room, and board was $2,100 per year. I took loans.

Then grad school, three times. I took loans.

I’m 52, just refinanced my house to pay off $85K in debt, some of it deferred from my undergrad.

But, I work 42 weeks a year and make six figures and will have a pension when I retire.

College - best five and a half years of vacation!

This is an interesting read thus far. Anyone here who didn’t go to college and doing well? I’m sure there are, I’d love to hear their experiences.

Read what twojarslave wrote.

Thanks, I must’ve glossed over that by accident.

Building a bit on what I wrote earlier…

Whether you go to college or not, the same principles for success apply. From a financial standpoint, you have to have SOMETHING that other people want from you. For all but a lucky few, it takes work to develop something marketable. On top of that, the value of whatever it is you are selling is always going to be equal to what someone else is willing to pay for it.

Going back to the example of my buddy, he spent about a decade of his life working as an independent plumber with human waste for 10-16 hours a day, 5-7 days per week. During this time he was not starving, but he was not thriving either. Fast forward to present, and plenty of people he knows see his nice home, fun toys and abundance of leisure time and say “You’re lucky!”.

There’s nothing lucky about spending much of your life literally covered in shit and the rewards you earn from that existence are just that - earned rewards.

Why are you purposefully trying to make yourself sound like a lucky, lazy piece of shit? Are you new here or something?

100% agree.

Mike Rowe is a big champion of earning trade skills and highlights a lot of success stories.

Not sure what I wrote that implies I consider myself lucky or lazy. Three graduate degrees aren’t the product of laziness or luck. The reference to undergrad being vacation is a reflection of my stupidity as a young man - I didn’t value that opportunity. Admittedly, my self deprecating tone doesn’t always translate in two dimensions, especially to the more concrete thinkers of the world. My apologies.

If you click on my avatar you’ll see I joined TNation in December of 2014, which does make me relatively new I expect.

Yeah, self-deprecation is pretty nuanced and difficult to recognize over the internet. I was trying to make a joke about how a lot of people here like to crow about how hard they worked for everything (hence the “are you new here” part), especially to younger posters like the OP, and your post made it seem like everything just fell in your lap. There’s usually more to it than that, obviously.

After reading it again, the “piece of shit” coup de grace makes it read more like an attack, rather than a joke, so I apologize.

See, it’s that whole nuance thing. And I can be a little slow in continuing to try to use a tone that doesn’t translate well.

Go Steelers!

Try paying bills, having kids, divorce, & incarceration… Stop being a bitch… Its college… Literally shit will never be easier

This cannot be repeated enough. Chant this shit when you are in college.

Youth as always, is wasted on the young.

I disagree. I enjoy my life a lot more now then when I was in college. I wouldn’t want to go back, unless I could retain all the experience I’ve gained since then.

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Different stokes. I loved being in a situation where I was learning like it was my job. I still try to read as much as I can now, but it was just a blast. Paired with the minimal responsibilities of being barely an adult went well.

Cool stuff has happened since the, but if I were somehow independently wealthy, I would be going to school a LOT.

Your life must be damn awesome then.

Because college was a rip-roaring good time. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy myself now…but you cannot get away with NEARLY the same stuff as college, which is probably a good thing.

Unless you are self employed or independently wealthy…nobody is living the college lifestyle in our late 30’s.

The people saying you are being a pussy are a bunch of morons. Seriously, what kind of answer is that? It doesn’t provide any useful information. I do wonder if people would say those things if they were forced to meet in person. Plus I know plenty of people who went to “college” who either had a joke course load at McDonalds University and were super cocky about it because they did “well”, or had a really challenging curriculum and only did average. At the end of the day college is all about you getting the most out of it. And further, since some of the replies really ticked me off, the more energy you waste “being busy” in the sense of one taking on more and more work without free time, the less efficient they become and eventually burn out. Being busy is not a badge of honor if you waste your life and time doing stupid unnecessary shit. Everyone needs time to recharge - the body only has a finite amount of energy to expend in one day.

Anyway, here is the deal, you’ve got to figure out why you aren’t doing well:

If the subject matter is too hard or you find it uninteresting then it is better to reassess your educational (and career) path now rather than when you are a senior or after you got your degree and are working (like some people I know). Believe me, you do not want to end up in a situation where you felt like you took the wrong major or struggled through your major with a bunch of mediocre grades, leading to a mediocre job.

If you have too much going on in your life then you need to decide what you are willing to do without.

If you are being lazy, well that is just going to follow you everywhere in life. If it isn’t this particular subject that will be difficult, something else will come along that is also difficult that you’ll try to avoid. In most cases this will hurt you in the long run.

If you aren’t doing well because the class requires a skill set that you don’t have, then you need to figure out how to acquire that skill set or get help from someone. I am particularly terrible at memorization-type classes. One of my most difficult classes was a stupid economics elective because the professor required lots of memorization to take his tests. I know people who are hopeless when it comes to mathematics, on the flip side.

It might also be worthwhile to “learn how you learn” as cliché as that may sound. I have found that getting a good night sleep, taking breaks every hour or 2, and reading from the textbook/reference, while writing notes in the margins, assures me that I will learn whatever material comes my way. Lectures, forget it, I cant multi-task so listening and understanding simultaneously is out of the question. Some people have great visual memories, and others learn best by doing.

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Currently doing the college thing too, and, I have to say, it’s great. (finishing first year)

I mean, sure, the food sucks, the rooms are tiny, the problem sets take forever and midterms/essays/finals are terminal bores, but what counts (and this has been said so many times in the thread) is just how much time you have to do the things that make you ‘you’. You want to lift? You can probably schedule in two sessions per day if you don’t procrastinate. Want to start a website? Sure, cut a little sleep and get efficient with your work.

I think that greater independence after graduation will be fun, but there’s something paradoxically freeing about being less independent at college.

Still have to do those gov. tax forms though.
Ugh.