Fresh out of H.S. in 1992 I was going for a B.F.A. (Bach. Fine Arts) in Musical Theater.
...Within a week, I realized just how unprepared I was for what was essentially a double major in acting and music, and switched to the B.A. Theater, acting focus.
...By semester break, I'd learned how much more fun it was to run the show and switched to the B.A. Theater, Tech.
...By the end of that year, I realized I wasn't going to be working in theater, and left college.
~2 years later, I went back and got an A.S. in Recreation and Parks from my local Community Col. I got into riding bikes and started working at a bike shop. Once I got the AS, I went on to Radford U. to get my B.A. in same. Realized I didn't want to be a babysitter for the rest of my life and left college again after a year. Did some other stuff, and went back to working in a bike shop.
Several years later got into a co-op program which paired the local CC with Ford and started going to school to be a mechanic. Also did the auto body and collision repair certificate program at the same time. Learned some stuff, did some work on cars, found out it wasn't as much as working on my own car, got royally ****** over by my Ford dealership, dropped out of the program in the middle of a semester and never looked back. Finished the auto body program, got a job at a bike shop.
Now, at 33, with a wife and a kid, I'm at UGA working on a History degree while my wife is going to Law School here. I'm a super-senior, but I still need one more language class and two electives after this semester, which I will probably take this summer through the University's distance learning program. We're going to move back to Virginia, and I'll probably get a job managing a bike shop!
So, 4 schools, 8 majors and 16 years later, what have I learned from all of this?
1. Stay in school, college kids. Even if you hate it, even if you have no idea why you're there, just finish it up the first time, and save yourself a lot of re-taking stupid s*** that didn't transfer from school to school.
2. College isn't for everyone.
3. It's not even remotely important what your major is, unless it's the sort of specific degree that trains you for a specific job field.
4. Picking a degree based on a career field you think you'd like to work in, but have no experience working in, is a bad idea. You may get into the classes and realize that you have no actual interest in the work, and now you've wasted at least a semester, possibly more, and have to back track.
5. Rather than spending all this time and money on college, I should have gotten an Associates in business and just opened my own bike shop 10 years ago.
6. Math is hard. College math is pointless and hard.
...i want to live where it never snows again!!!)
