I need guidance! From you Fellow BTS Folk.

I need guidance!
Look everybody, I enjoy life, but lately everything has been very difficult for me. The more I attempt at getting myself a decent education, so that I can find a job, the more in debt and the further behind I get. This is now my third attempt at college, and frankly, I just don't fit in.

I am requesting career suggestions for people such as myself, who seems intelligent enough, but just can't get along inside the institutions of higher learning. These systems just don't work for me, so now that I'm close to Ten grand in debt, and no closer to a Bachelors degree, what am I to do now?

Any helpful suggestions, for people like me, would be right up my alley, as no degree program seems fitting for me, and very little about the traditional slave job 9 to 5er appeals to my sensibilities either.

So I’m smart, intelligent, creative, honest, hard working, just can’t deal with the university B.S. any longer. What are they trying to teach us anyway? It all seems contrived to place us in debt before we even get a chance.

Please suggest some avenues to a healthy career in something that lies outside the box. I am not content with the status quo, and am generally sickened by the attitude of laziness within the workplaces of America. The higher up you get, the less amount of actual work one does. But the lower on the rung one is, the more work, and smaller wage one receives. Does any of this really make sense to any of you out there, or is my perspective seriously flawed?

Just reporting my rant on the inconsistencies and pit falls of our general condition, and finding out that more and more I don't belong. Or perhaps I'm here to help usher in a new era of human relationships, where the mind is free from the shackles of the survival instinct, and therefore free to reach to even greater level of being. Beyond this, everything else is disgustingly boring.

I have a degree and i don't even use it. So here I sit,paying off loans that were of no use anyway. I chose a career that most people would laugh at. I was a nurse,then I switched to teaching mentally retarded adults to be independent. It pays terribly ,but I wouldn't change it for anything. I could go back to nursing and make more,but I am happier than ever. Just look within yourself and really think about what you would love doing. Don't worry about money as money will only make you happy for a little while. I'm sure you have some talent that you could put to good use in a career that won't make you bitter and that will make you feel like you've accomplished something. Once you find what you love...the money will come eventually.

Psycho is right. Find something you enjoy doing. It beats punching a clock just to get a paycheck. And in the end the paycheck is gone and you are back to punching the clock.

If you want a great free education, go live on the streets as a homeless bum for a month or so. You can't get closer to human understanding or how life is without experiencing it first hand. You'll also come away knowing the difference between necessities and desires. And find ways to save what you earn you never realized.

This path too is not for everybody. Depends on what you value in education, the sheepskin, or the knowledge?

Well, I take it since you went into debt that you do not have many resources to tap?

I would have suggested starting a Bar. NOT, I say again NOT, a resteraunt.

Bars are really good if you can come up with the original capitol to buy the place. It may take some "slave labor" by you to get the down payment, but if you can do it I would suggest it.

It's a safe investment because even if the bar fails, you still own the building. Additionally, resteraunts make all of their money on alcohol anyway, so you cut the food expense down a lot. There is also very little (or in some cases no) salary that needs to be paid to employees, as they all make their money in tips.

I am planning on doing this as an investment after I finish buisness school.

Another option is a 'high risk' job. It is high risk for a reason, but then again you get paid for taking the risk. It wouldn't be for everybody of course, but you can make a lot of money very quickly, and you might even come away from it with some sense of accomplishment you wouldn't or couldn't get in another situation.

I know that haliberton (yes, the great satan) was paying around $200,000 a year for truck drivers in convoys over in Iraq. I don't know if they are still doing this, or if they even need help though. Of course, you'd be in Iraq for a year, and have a decent chance of getting killed or losing an arm, but you would have nearly no expenses, and come back with a very nice chunk of change. You could use this to start your own buisness.

Commercial fisherman can make good money. A buddy of mine from college had a brother who was a fisherman in Alaska. He got paid something like $30,000 for around a 3 month stint. They only let you work 6 months or so a year though. (BTW, I am not sure if those figures/times are right - I am going off memory). Again, you could do this for a few years in order to build up capitol to start your own buisness.

Construction is always there. If you get into the union you can get paid around 35-40 dollars an hour outside of Philly, and also get benefits with that. It's hard labor of course, but you don't need to many skills to get your foot in the door.

If I were you, I would look at investing the next few years of my life towards building up savings with which to start a buisness that I wanted.

Oh - two more random jobs that are high risk, but if you are good at them can be very lucrative and also allow you a lot of freedom in your life...

If you are good in economics, day trading can be lucrative, though you could also lose money. I try my hand at it semi regularly, and find that over time I make money... But then again My mom was a V/P at Morgan-Stanly and I am getting a masters in buisness, so I do know what I am doing.

Likewise, I am an avid poker player (and was before the whole poker craze began). If you are good with numbers, like the game, and aren't one to get emotional you can make some good money doing this.

During college I would try to play 2 times a week online, and found that I could make around a hundred dollars a session. Again, this takes money up front, and if you aren't a good player you will lose. Also, it is a bit of a 'grind' - You just look at cards over and over again. I get into it, it excites me from an intelectual standpoint to try and out do other people (I am very competative).

I guess the most important thing is to figure out 1) what you are good at and 2) what you like to do.

Cross reference those things, and then figure out how to make money doing it.