Why not quit and get out?

College definitely isn't a "magic bullet" to fortune and fame; it just makes your more 'competitive' while seeking employment.

Unless your majoring in pre-med (eventually med school), engineering, computer engineering/science, pre-law, etc - and even then you need to go beyond the 4 year bachelors degree to become a "professional".

If your majoring in something like communications or "early 19th century literature", it's pretty much useless. In fact, most tradesmen/woman I know make more $$ then college grads that I know.

 

my generation thinks college is a ticket to success failing to understand that the INDIVIDUAL is the key to success. i was such a complete screw up in school, 4th grade they told my mother to institutionalize me cuz i'd become a career criminal or addicted to drugs. ha yeah look at me now. college is a bunch of crap they push on kids. you're better off going out into the work force and finding out what you actually enjoy doing, then pursue college.

 

A couple years back I knew a girl that worked for a large home store in the garden dept. She was there a few yrs. and was a HS. grad. The company hired a girl that had a degree in horticulture and paid her more than girls that had been there much longer.
Among other screw ups while she was alone on the floor she decided to fix about 8 flats of flowers by cutting off the heads. She with her advanced learning decided that they were near the end of their bloom and it would be better for them if she pruned them. Now how many flowers without heads do you think the store was able to sell.

 

that might be the most correct comment on here.It is much better to take a year or 2 off see how bad the "real world" is and figure out what you want to do. Myself graduated early fall trimester of senior year of 08 been in landscaping since then. Good and bad yes/no and inbetween and am thinking about making a jump. Its not the work its trying not to be an old man by the age of 40 Now if I wouldnt of told ye ole land bout dem dare lot lizards.... oops

 

Yes it is worth it. I worked 19 years in the heavy highway construction making very good union wages. Long before it all dried up and went away, I was hating the life that I had. Getting up at 2 AM to drive to the jobs typically 100 miles out as a journeyman, work 8-10 hours and drive back exhausted and filthy. Could never take a day off, they'd just get someone else who could show up every day. In trucking I can take a day off once in a while, I won't be fired for it. I can take a week off, whatever. Freight is still there to be moved and I feel 'needed' and 'wanted' for my skills, driving, time management, my tractor, my ontime record, whatever it may be, if that makes sense. The job may not pay as well as my old job, but my body doesn't hurt every day anymore, I don't have a boss telling me on Monday morning to have this job done by Thursday because the concrete trucks are coming then when any sane person knows the job cannot be done in less than 7 days etc, the concrete trucks showing up and we are still forming up the footings etc. The value of not having that much stress any more is incalculable.

 

If it fits your lifestyle, then it's a great thing. If it doesn't, figure out what would, and pursue that. I took some time off to see what else I might want to pursue, and realized I don't really want to do much else. So, I'm back to trucking next week, after a month sitting at home.

 

I havent been on here in a while........lets see

here is my view on this

while the industry is not nearly the same as it was when i started 9 yrs ago(age 18 instate commerce hauler) the pay rates vary depending on where you are and who you work for it seems. Ive done a little of everything in my time. I ran a triaxle water tanker for the oil field in western pa for a yr.......you wanna talk about abuse.........if you didnt work 140 hrs a week you werent working hard enough, if you made less than 1900 a week you werent working hard enough. it all paid by the hour and somehow the company i worked for always slid under the radar as far as dot was concerned, they would pull us over check the credentials on the owners card run our license numbers and as long as we came back with a clean record that was it. they knew we were running illegal but never really acted on it. then on october 20 2010 the unthinkable happened to me. my childhood friend was in front of me on a backroad leaving a well site and he yelled about a speeding car heading toward us, i moved over a few inches and slowed down. that road had been repaved a few weeks prior to this morning and the road gave out and i rolled twice down a hill and came to rest on the drivers side. i walked away without injury thank god. upon lookin at the whole picture the drilling company hired a company to pave the road which was dirt before this, they paved roughly 12 inches above the old road and filled the shouler with gravel, i got the drives about 2 inches into the gravel and she gave out. dot was present to order me to take a drug test which i passed......never asked about paper work or log book nothing of the sorts. the funny thing was i was only on the clock for 4 hrs and had a good 13 hrs off before that shift which was odd for us to have more than 6 hrs off.......dot never wrote anything up, the company paid nearly a million for cleanup plus the loss of the truck i ran that was only a yr old (every 2 yrs each truck was replaced) that afternoon when i got home my gf told me it was time for me to stop running like that (before this i ran steel and would run my ##### off for 6 days come home sleep for a day and go back)... 2 days after the accident they already had another truck for me to run. in feb 2011 i went for my dot physical and my blood pressure was high so i went to my dr and he urged me to get out of what i was doin and find a job where i was legal and could relax. in a nutshell i now work for a local company 3 miles from my house i work monday thru friday and my paycheck is usually around 800 a week, a far cry from the money i made before. i apologize for such a long rant but my point is if you are otr or local and you feel you are runnin too much or being abused, there is always a better job somewhere else where you can run more comfy............oh btw the job i have now is great i have yet to work a full 70 hr week, i leave monday morning and im home friday afternoon

 

my point was i almost got out of the drivers seat for a job flippin burgers, probably would make around the same as i am now but there is always a drivin job where you can be happy........although i miss runnin coast to coast i enjoy being home every weekend now.

 

and if you ran thru pa between 5-06 and 3-08 and went thru a work zone where crews were setting concrete barrier wall, chances are you saw my truck sittin there either loading or unloading.....that was another job where we had to work a lot longer than anyone wanted to but that was worth it as well, it all comes down to what works for you and finding that comfort zone

 

4 more years and I'm done. I retired after 28 years at UPS. Then a divorce happened (hey, who knew ? not me..) so, in order to satisfy my alimony obligations, I was forced to "unretire" (not a great term, but you get the drift) and return to work. In less than 4 years all my legal obligations to the ex are over and I can go back to collecting my pension. In the interim, since I resumed work at a union house, my pension benefits will be greater than before the divorce. I can't wait to leave the business. Over the years I have watched trucking go from being a profession one could be proud of, to a refuge for the jobless and less than desirable segments of society. It has been downgraded from a skilled profession to the status of just another bottom of the rung job. Can't wait until my time is over with.