[yonton228]

I have been tryin to narrow down my intrests and figure out what I would like to do in college. A few things come to mind;

Sheet metal fabrication
Welding
Metal fabrication
Automotive repair and diagnostics ( engine repair,suspension,drive train etc. etc. etc.)
Motorcyle repair and diagnostics ( engine repair,suspension,drive train etc. etc. etc.)
History ( U.S., European )
Biology
Human nutrition
Cullinary Arts

I also am thinking about working with troubled youth, because I made some bad choices in my young life and didnt know what to do. So I think that I would be able to help kids with the same problems that I had while in school.

I am currently 18 years old and I am tryin to figure out, or at least narrow the things that I am interested in and go in the general direction that I would like to go.

So what I am basically asking is, what type of things could I do to help narrow my interests and choose a general career path. Also if you know any website that can help narrow you interest plz post em, I know they exist, because I took many in high school, but they never really could help me because I like to many things.

I would appreciate it if you could tell me if you had the same problem when choosing a career path ( not being able to decide what you want to do) and how you choose one in the end.

Sorry if this is hard to read, I am not the best writer in the world, I am a much better speaker.

-Timmy

ps. I have already narrowed down the things that I am very interested in from about 25 things to this current list.

 

[SkaredShtles]

I have been tryin to narrow down my intrests and figure out what I would like to do in college. A few things come to mind;

Sheet metal fabrication
Welding
Metal fabrication
Automotive repair and diagnostics ( engine repair,suspension,drive train etc. etc. etc.)
Motorcyle repair and diagnostics ( engine repair,suspension,drive train etc. etc. etc.)
History ( U.S., European )
Biology
Human nutrition
Cullinary Arts

Ummm....... forget college for all but history, biology, and *maybe* nutrition. Find a good trade school.

Do you like good food? If so, I'd go for the culinary arts gig. Not only good food, but you have a chance to see the world. Be good at it and you can work pretty much anywhere.

I'd like to have done a culinary arts thing. I guess I'll just have to settle for home schooling.

 

[Ciaran]

I don't think you have to pick a major right away so I would take many different classes during your undergrad years and see what you like best. And remember that you may change your mind later so keep it open.

Edit: And dude, you DO NOT want to be a welder for a living. Trust me, it sucks. Do something where you have people working for you, not the other way around.

 

[stinkyboy]

I don't think you have to pick a major right away so I would take many different classes during your undergrad years and see what you like best. And remember that you may change your mind later so keep it open.

Edit: And dude, you DO NOT want to be a welder for a living. Trust me, it sucks. Do something where you have people working for you, not the other way around.

Go to college and finish! The experience alone is worth the money. Stave off the real world as long as possible!

 

[yonton228]

I am not tryin to pick exactly what I want to do at this moment, I am just tryin to narrow my choices a little bit more. I want to keep my options open for the time being, just in case I do not like the thing that I am doing at the moment.

My uncle is a welder in Wisconsin, on lake Michigan and he makes about 80k a year. He has been doin it for about 4 years now. So the pay is not that bad, I also like working by myself sometimes, thats a good thing about welding, its you the metal and the welding rod.

I love cooking and learning how to cook new things. I would cook more, but living in a apartment I cannot do the things I would like to do when it comes to cookin. I do not have a large enough stove and oven to cook a full 5 corse meal and I do not have the proper cooking utensils,( pots pans, steamers, a nice oven with gas not electric etc etc.)

Thnx for the input so far.

-Timmy

 

[greenchris]

go to college its worth the trip.you have two years of gen eds before you even start with classes that go towards your major.

 

[sanjuro]

Ask yourself this:

Do you want to work in an office for the next 40 years? Or not?

College is not for everyone, and I don't mean if you don't go to college, next stop McDonald's.

There are many successful people who did not go to college. However statistically, college graduates make way more money than just high school grads.

I also know plenty of people who have degrees who work in totally different fields. A friend of mine with a Sociology degree worked as a mechanic, cook, then photography (a hobby of his), and now works for a major retirement fund company as their director of publications which he started as a photographer. He could have remained at any of his other jobs (and he wants to open a restaurant someday). but the degree opened the door to a big time office job.

You could also be as successful as Rob Roskopp, the owner of Santa Cruz, but I bet he knows the inside and out of a business plan better than a MBA does.

 

[yonton228]

I refuse to work in a ****IN CUBICLE FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE!

Now that I got that off my chest....... I understand that you can be a cerified welder and teach english at a high school or work on cars with a sociology degree, however I am just tryin to narrow things down for now. To get started and be sumtin in life rather than end up like some people in my familly, which is not a good thing.

 

[sanjuro]

I refuse to work in a ****IN CUBICLE FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE!

Now that I got that off my chest....... I understand that you can be a cerified welder and teach english at a high school or work on cars with a sociology degree, however I am just tryin to narrow things down for now. To get started and be sumtin in life rather than end up like some people in my familly, which is not a good thing.

Well here is one perspective on this matter which I thought was informative:

http://www.nytimes.com/indexes/2005/05/24/national/class/

 

[N8 v2.0]

Best thing a guy your age can do is enlist in the military and get the heck out of your hometown for a while.

You can learn a good trade if you are selective about what job you take and save some $'s for college later.

 

[yonton228]

Meh, the whole mitlitary thing is, well... my dad was in the Army for 23 years, until he got medically retired. I would like to join the Army, but more specifically I would try for the special forces, ie. Rangers, Seals, Green Berets. But the problem with that is I would like to some day have a family, and when your in the special forces the devorce rate is near 85%. And to me, that sacrifice at this moment in time is not worth the risk.

I may be young and have lots of time to do what I want to do in life but, first I need to find the general direction I want to go in.

-Timmy

 

[PonySoldier]

Best thing a guy your age can do is enlist in the military and get the heck out of your hometown for a while.

You can learn a good trade if you are selective about what job you take and save some $'s for college later.

Not a bad idea, I wasn't selective and didn't learn a trade however with the G.I. Bill and the other aid that being a vet made me eligible for I didn't pay a dime of my own money for my bachelors Degree.

 

[Velocity Girl]

With your interest in metal fabrication, auto repair, etc. have you considered Mechanical Engineering? And if you had the ambition to take some extra classes somewhere in welding, fabrication, repair, etc that would be a great combination. Having hands on experience/knowledge as and Engineer helps alot, and helps give you a much broader undestanding of what you're working on (and helps gain the respect of the techs working for you )

As for History....only reason I would shy away from that if I was you is that you mentioned you aren't a great writer...you'll be writing papers till the cows come home if you study that in college.

Good luck!!!

 

[jmvar]

With your interest in metal fabrication, auto repair, etc. have you considered Mechanical Engineering?

If you like the hands on stuff such as welding and working on cars/motorcycles, take VG's advice. Find a University with Mechanical Engineering program that is hands on. You will not only get to do all of these things, but also design and test. I graduated from the University of Maryland with a Mech E. degree and these are some projects I worked on:

-Human powered submarine-designed and built the entire thing with a bicycle drive train to drive the sub
-Hybrid electric chevy suburnban-thats right, we tore apart a brand new suburban and made it a hybrid electric vehicle
-wind tunnel testing to reduce drag on tractor trailers, scaled down project with models but very fun non-the-less
-redesign of dewalt circular saw
-mini F1 car that had complete frame tube with 600cc street bike engine (this thing was sick)

As you can see we worked a lot with private industry so a lot of times we had huge budgets to do what we wanted. Especially with the hybrid suburban.

Getting an Mech E. degree is not a walk in the park, you will sacrifice a lot of party time in college compared to other majors. But you will learn a lot about the mechanical world around you and it will give you unbelieveable problem solving skills. From there you can go on and do anything in the list you have above and you will be surprised how much your education will aide you in even something like being a chef.

 

[ALEXIS_DH]

With your interest in metal fabrication, auto repair, etc. have you considered Mechanical Engineering? And if you had the ambition to take some extra classes somewhere in welding, fabrication, repair, etc that would be a great combination. Having hands on experience/knowledge as and Engineer helps alot, and helps give you a much broader undestanding of what you're working on (and helps gain the respect of the techs working for you )

As for History....only reason I would shy away from that if I was you is that you mentioned you aren't a great writer...you'll be writing papers till the cows come home if you study that in college.

Good luck!!!

i've had similar interests to this guy...
i got into aerospace engineering... but i dropped off. now am in auto mechanics/metal fab school where i actually learn what i wanted to learn in the 1st place.

i'll probably go back to finish college (3 semester more, am 22 yo) after am done with auto mechanics.. learning the trade first kinda gives me a better understanding of what i was doing in college.
and even if i dont go back to college, i can still have a job as a mechanic or start the car-importing business i had in mind quite a while ago...

if you have some doubts about college (AE or ME are demanding majors after the 4th semester), or if you are not finantially or academically quite ready for college, using a trade school as a 1st step would be a wise idea.


checking into a trade school

 

[yonton228]

Thnx everyone for the great input, hopefully this summer I will be able to get this construction job that I have been tryin to get and I will be able to save up lots and lots of money for school. The way it's lookin is that I will take classes at Bates Technical College (obviously a technical school near me) in the winter or the spring.

It is really important to me that I get a secondary education becuase I dropped out of high school ( really long story.)
So I guess I'll start tellin. When I was in 11th grade I started skippin school alot and hangin out with freinds and doin "extra curicilar" activities. When I finally started going back to school it was too late, I could not graduate on time and I could not allow myself to continue to go to that school. So my father and myself thought it would be better if I moved in with my mom and went to the high school that was right next to her house. So last summer I went to register to that school, while I was registering to the school one of the guidance counslers and the VP of the school told me a few lies. One being that I could not take more than one English class at a time, however you could in fact take more than one English class at a time. I had many co-workers that did this and told me that I could have. So, basically the counsler and the VP lied to me and screwed me over, I would have had to take 2 more years of high school . They recommended a couple of programs to continue my education , but the program that I entered was sub-par to say the least. So I got my GED and thats where I am at now.

It's not like I am a dumb kid, in fact whenever I took national tests I always scored in the top 5% of the nation. I could have been a straight (A) student if I applied myself. In all my tests that I took in my classes all the grades where (A's). I had college's sending me letters of acceptance when I was in the 9th grade, even though I never applied to the schools. Unfortunatly I could not take advantage of these offers due to the fact that my father thought I should finish high school to prepare myself for college rather that start going to a college in the 9th grade.

Once again thank you for all the great words of advice.

-Timmy

 

[yonton228]

Getting an Mech E. degree is not a walk in the park, you will sacrifice a lot of party time in college compared to other majors. But you will learn a lot about the mechanical world around you and it will give you unbelieveable problem solving skills. From there you can go on and do anything in the list you have above and you will be surprised how much your education will aide you in even something like being a chef.

I am not worried about party time, for the most part I am a home body type person. I love spending time with my mom, fiancee' and close freinds.

 

[Ciaran]

I understand your situation. I was much the same way. Started hanging witht he bad crowd, dropped out, got my equivelancy diploma. I may not be a Cal Tech genius, but I am far from being a box of rocks. As others have said, school is not the only way to get an education. Whether or not you goto college and no matter what you do in life never stop learning.

 

[SkaredShtles]

<snip>
It's not like I am a dumb kid, in fact whenever I took national tests I always scored in the top 5% of the nation. I could have been a straight (A) student if I applied myself. In all my tests that I took in my classes all the grades where (A's). I had college's sending me letters of acceptance when I was in the 9th grade, even though I never applied to the schools. Unfortunatly I could not take advantage of these offers due to the fact that my father thought I should finish high school to prepare myself for college rather that start going to a college in the 9th grade.

Once again thank you for all the great words of advice.

-Timmy

Are all you young high school punks listening? This man is wise beyond his years. Mack? You listening? Pay attention, boy.

 

[SkaredShtles]

<snip> I may not be a Cal Tech genius, but I am far from being a box of rocks.

I think you may underestimate your rockliness.

 

[yonton228]

never stop learning

WHOA! I would have a heart attack if I stopped learning. Hostory Channel, Discovery Channel, TLC, Home and Garden Tv, etc. etc. etc. I would die if I did not have this wonderfull stations to watch. I also love to read, about hysics(even though I dont fully understand everything, I can get a good idea of what they are talkin about) space in general, biology, National Geographic, Maximum PC, the dictionary, encyclopedia, I read these things for fun. My mom always thought it was really wierd that I read the Dictionary and Encyclopedia, I am no genius, far from it. However I have a very whide base on knowledge, I can have a conversation with just about anyone, talking just about everything. I may not have a HUGE IN DEPTH knowledge about the topice but I can hold an inteligent conversasion about it.

 

[Ciaran]

I think you may underestimate your rockliness.

What I do and say inthe Political Forum does not count!

 

[yonton228]

bwahahahaha

 

[SkaredShtles]

What I do and say inthe Political Forum does not count!

And *this* ladies and gentlemen, is the hallowed Political Forum here at Ridemonkey. Please check your brains at the door.