I hate college

[JulesMaximus]

 

[Pantlegz]

What kind of job are you looking for? There are TONS of IT jobs in just about every discipline imaginable in my market. I'm kind of shocked at the number of openings to be honest.

I'm not sure really, I've got background mostly in netoworking with some server 2k3/2k8 and vm (ESX/ESXi) experience. The only certs I have currently are A+/Net+ thinking about going to get my CCNA not sure that it will help matters any though. There are quite a few jobs but most of the ones I find on monster or dice, because I'm in a smaller city(50kish) and there isn't much local, want tons of experience and a BS for little to no raise. The ones that seem to pay well are in fields that I don't have much experience, mostly SQL.

 

[Gigantopithecus]

Honestly, I cannot imagine how you could not have a good time in college unless you really did not try.

This.

Ha @ IT flunkies making wonderful arguments for why they should be at trade school rather than a university.

 

[IndyColtsFan]

I'm not sure really, I've got background mostly in netoworking with some server 2k3/2k8 and vm (ESX/ESXi) experience. The only certs I have currently are A+/Net+ thinking about going to get my CCNA not sure that it will help matters any though. There are quite a few jobs but most of the ones I find on monster or dice, because I'm in a smaller city(50kish) and there isn't much local, want tons of experience and a BS for little to no raise. The ones that seem to pay well are in fields that I don't have much experience, mostly SQL.

First of all, I advise all prospective IT employees (or anyone for that matter) to get a degree. It may seem like a waste of time but it isn't and it will likely pay huge dividends and will make it easier to get your foot in the door. Certs expire or are superceded by new certs, but you'll always have your degree and increasingly, more employers are requiring degrees. Because I have a degree, I have gotten to do a lot of cool things and have been able to travel all over the world as part of my job. While it is true that IMO, many jobs requiring degrees don't actually need them, I wouldn't let that opinion prevent me from getting a degree.

Experience is extremely important in IT but I think your small market probably doesn't help either. My advice is to get your BS and in the meantime, attempt to target internships and even volunteer IT opportunities in order to build a portfolio of real-world experience.

 

[Saint Nick]

Congratulations, you now have joined the ranks of how the other 85% of collegiates feel.

 

[BurnItDwn]

I agree with the OP.
I hated going to class.

I didn't mind some aspects of college, but, I hated the educational parts. I droppped outta college after 2 years and went into IT, I haven't regretted my decision thus far. (dropped out in 2000, so I've had a good 10 years to regret if I was going to)

 

[ShawnD1]

that's what credit cards are for. Hello!

There's no way maxing out a credit card on beer and fast food will come back to haunt me! :awe:

Seriously? I went for engineering and I practically put myself through college. I worked the student cafeteria for pocket money, did internships over the summer

Your numbers just won't add up unless you're intentionally piling on huge amounts of debt.
tuition = $4000 per year where I went (more like $10k in US state college, $20-30k for private)
rent = $500 per month
food = $100 per month
transportation = $70 (student discount bus pass!! yeahh!)
phone/internet/computer/paper/pencils/supplies = $150 per month

School is full time and there's homework so about 20 hours of work per week is all one can reasonably handle. Shit jobs in this city pay about $10 per hour. A semester is about 4 months so your expenses are: (4000 / 2) + [(500 + 100 + 70 + 150) * 4] = $5280 for the first semester.
Income for that semester is 20h/wk * $10/h * 4wk/mo * 4mo = $3200??

So even when working 20 hours per week and not drinking ANY beer or doing ANY drugs, we're still running at a ~$2000 loss per semester.

 

[Dr. Zaus]

And those other states are only going to give you a provisional certification. Let's say you teach math, then come to NY. They'll say "that's nice, you can teach for 3 years. But at the end of those 3 years, you have to have a master's degree, including 12 credit hours at the master's level in mathematics, this, this, this, this, this, this, and this course in education, this training, that training, this training, and that training."

Ok; so you may be stuck with other right-to-work-states ;-). But you'll have a job, you can save some cash and go back to school and get a grad-degree, as is fitting a scientists/engineer.

(If you aren't one of those then I don't see how you expected to do anything but teach, or teach at a CC after you get your PhD.)

There's no way maxing out a credit card on beer and fast food will come back to haunt me! :awe:



Your numbers just won't add up unless you're intentionally piling on huge amounts of debt.
tuition = $4000 per year where I went (more like $10k in US state college, $20-30k for private)
rent = $500 per month
food = $100 per month
transportation = $70 (student discount bus pass!! yeahh!)
phone/internet/computer/paper/pencils/supplies = $150 per month

School is full time and there's homework so about 20 hours of work per week is all one can reasonably handle. Shit jobs in this city pay about $10 per hour. A semester is about 4 months so your expenses are: (4000 / 2) + [(500 + 100 + 70 + 150) * 4] = $5280 for the first semester.
Income for that semester is 20h/wk * $10/h * 4wk/mo * 4mo = $3200??

So even when working 20 hours per week and not drinking ANY beer or doing ANY drugs, we're still running at a ~$2000 loss per semester.

Summer is full time/dual part time; which comes out to $4800 a semester.

Also, how many room mates does it take to get to $500 a month rent and $150(WTF) for phone internet and paper?!

Further, most people who don't have parents to help at all qualify for a pell grant, which is another 5+K a year.

Finally, unless you are a retard that doesn't need to be in school anyway you can always find a worse school with a better fin-aid package.

 

[Kirby]

I hate most of my classes too, but the booze, football, and pussy make up for it.

Sometimes.

 

[ShawnD1]

Also, how many room mates does it take to get to $500 a month rent

2 room mates.

and $150(WTF) for phone internet and paper?!

Phone is about $50 per month. Internet at the time was about $40 per month. Printing a single sheet of color 11x17 paper (all engineering drawings are printed on 11x17 in color) is $0.25 per page and it must be done using the school's stuff because nobody in the world has enough money to put autocad on their home computer because it's about $4000 per license. Printing my ~50 page final project on glossy paper was about $20 per copy and I had to make 1 copy for the person marking the writing style/grammar and 1 copy for the person marking the engineering aspects of it.
Some of that $150 also goes to books. I didn't buy text books, but we had course packs that had things like lab manuals and class notes. You need to buy these and they cost about $30 per course. They're each about 100-200 pages of dense information so it's really not that bad. I still have most of them

Further, most people who don't have parents to help at all qualify for a pell grant, which is another 5+K a year.

The way it works in Canada is that they look at your parents rather than you. If your parents have something that vaguely resembles a job, you don't qualify for student aid. If you want a loan, the loan will be in your parents name. If your parents don't feel like signing a loan, you're fucked. My girlfriend is in this situation right now; she can't get aid because her parents are too wealthy and her parents will not take out a loan, so she must live with them and be dirt poor all the time until she graduates and has a real job. When I was a student, I borrowed about $10,000 directly from my parents.

Finally, unless you are a retard that doesn't need to be in school anyway you can always find a worse school with a better fin-aid package.

In Canada, you can't get aid unless you are a visible minority or disabled in some way. There are things like scholarships for native indians (never used because natives never graduate high school), scholarships for metis (white people who think they are indians), Women In Technology (because my entire engineering department only had 2 female students), and various other racist and sexist scholarships. Bursaries given because of financial situation look at the parents. My parents both had jobs, so I didn't qualify for any of that.

So if anyone wants to know why white men with jobs are so angry at the entire world, there's your reason. If I were a female treaty indian with unemployed parents, my entire education would have been free regardless of what my grades were.

 

[Born2bwire]

There's no way maxing out a credit card on beer and fast food will come back to haunt me! :awe:



Your numbers just won't add up unless you're intentionally piling on huge amounts of debt.
tuition = $4000 per year where I went (more like $10k in US state college, $20-30k for private)
rent = $500 per month
food = $100 per month
transportation = $70 (student discount bus pass!! yeahh!)
phone/internet/computer/paper/pencils/supplies = $150 per month

School is full time and there's homework so about 20 hours of work per week is all one can reasonably handle. Shit jobs in this city pay about $10 per hour. A semester is about 4 months so your expenses are: (4000 / 2) + [(500 + 100 + 70 + 150) * 4] = $5280 for the first semester.
Income for that semester is 20h/wk * $10/h * 4wk/mo * 4mo = $3200??

So even when working 20 hours per week and not drinking ANY beer or doing ANY drugs, we're still running at a ~$2000 loss per semester.

Nope. I walked away with $15K of debt total. Between the grants, scholarships, and loans I didn't need to worry about the costs of tuition and room and board. Plus a decent internship over the summer would get me around $6.5K-$12K. In total, I probably pulled in around $8K-$20K a year in terms of money earned on the job. When I hit grad school I could clear $30K from assistantships and then internships. But I am not considering grad school here since that is a different experience than undergraduate.

This was around 2000-2005 or so. So, rent was $275 a month for four people in a four bedroom townhouse. Utilities was around $60 a person when split four ways (gas, water, electric and cable/internet). Campus buses were free for students so I only paid a little into my gas, maintainance and insurance on the car, say a generous $200 a month. So the basics, minus food, ran $500 or so a month. I don't remember the exact costs that the financial aid center estimated for me, but I think it was around $12K-$15K a year. Course that included tuition, room, board and misc. So it was around $7.8K a year I needed for living expenses. Then there came tuition and books. Books cost me maybe $400 a year. Tuition, the final year I was there, was around $9K a year.

So that costs a little over $17K a year. So with the summer internships, at worst, I need about $10K over the school year. Easy with the financial aid and working the school cafeterias with only a small number of hours I pulled in around $2.25K on that. Now on Stafford loans you could get $5K each semester, the first $3k-$4K or so was subsidized. So with those numbers I could handle it easily enough with just loans. However, I also got plenty of grants and scholarships and the financial aid office gave money to account for more than tuition. So I got plenty of money after the financial aid to spend. Actually, I only worked the cafeterias for one year I think. That was the year following the one summer where I took classes instead of working. But the rest of the internships gave me enough savings that I didn't need to work during the school year.