I'm 19 years old, will be 20 in less than a month. Currently I attend a small university with a religious affiliation and I'm studying computer science with a management minor. My parents were never wealthy so I've been paying for everything on my own including my S2000. So far the only debt I'm in is owing about $10,000 on my car, but I have that much money invested in mutual funds. I've been paying for it by working my butt of 30+ hours per week while attending school full-time. I work for the IT-dept of a small call center, more specifically in network telecommunications.

In the past 6 months I've been getting fed up more and more by the decisions made by management. I won't go into the kind of crap I'm having to put up with, but beleive me, it's pretty bad. Now here's my problem: I'd like to finish school ASAP because I don't like it, but I'd also like to finish school without going into any debt. I've been looking into finding employment elsewhere, but it's really difficult since the area is almost dead economically speaking, so I really doubt anything will happen. I've also been toying with the idea of taking out student loans, cut work to like 10-15 hours a week, take as much overload as I can, and finish school in another year. Paying for the S2000 will be very difficult with this option. Yet a third option I've been considering is moving to a big city nearby like Chicago, working full-time for a year or two, saving up enough to pay off the S2000 and pay for the rest of school, and coming back to school and making just enough to pay for insurance on my car. My concern with this would be first of all finding a company that paid decent that would hire without a degree, and coming back to school once I'm making decent money. College is something I definetely want to finish.

Basically I'm looking for some advice from both those who are my age, and those who've already finished school. What would you do?

 

finish school. Sell your car if you have to. Do whatever you need to do, but finish before you take any time off. Don't try to overload on classes to get done sooner - all that will happen is your performance will go down. No sense finishing school with a low GPA.

As long as your job allows you to finish school, don't sweat it. It really isn't worth any more of an investment from you. Once you are done with school, you probably have four or five years before it really starts paying off, so don't assume the day you graduate you can get that dream job.

 

From what I hear you're going a pretty responsible young man. Creating goals, reaching them and maintaining the cool. I agree with 'no really', but if you really can't handle it, just remember one thing, you can always return the car, maybe take a small hit and at the end of it all you'll realize it's not the end of the world but some sill small silly sum of money. Wait till you buy a house

 

Sell your car, work as little as possible and go to school full time.

You'll find that most stress that comes about isn't about the "others" like management, its about you and the situations you choose.

Granted some people need stuff to do constantly; if you're able to do all of these things at once and want to, go ahead.

You're young and seem pretty responsible anyhow, so whatever you choose to do, I'm sure it will work out.

 

Under no circumstances would I postpone getting the degree - even if that means getting rid of the car or having to work less and taking out a student loan. You think going to school is hard now? It only gets harder as you get older.

Like you, I didn't care for going to school but it was something that needed to be done. I overloaded on courses, stayed in school during the summer and finished when I was 21. I simply thought of school as being my full-time job and couldn't see the point in taking breaks so that I could work some menial, go nowhere job for a while.

As far as being fed up with your job and management, you're learning early that today's workplace can be a real cesspool. When I was a student, I thought things were stressful - finals, juggling classes and work, finances, etc. Looking back, those were the easier days. The only advice I can give you is to not always question the "why?" behind things, but just do these things better than everybody else, promote, and move on to bigger and better things. I've seen very bright people with incredible potential never rise through the ranks because their frustration with the system ate them alive. And the sad thing is this attitude keeps them at the levels which most often are the most frustrating to be at. If your job pays better than anything else around, suck it up - it's not permanent - finish school and move on.

Don't drag it out, in other words.

 

Bro, I got to say like everyone else said....finish your school! After high school I hated going to school, so I got a pretty good paying job with some great benefits after about 3 semesters in school. Dropped out and didn't look back. Once you're earning pretty good money it's easy to forget about college, but I tell you what, I'm hustling now to get my BS (comp science too) before I get too far into my current career. I've seen too many people get screwed because they don't got a degree. If you need to sell the S, then that's the sacrifice you need to make for now. Go on with what you got, get your degree and make a shitload of money and buy another S. Education will never let you down.

It's tough to make that decision.....I understand where you're coming from though. No one has the perfect answer for you besides you.....do what you got to do, but REALLY think about it!

 

Thanks for the advice everyone. I won't have to pay for next year's school until the middle of July, so there's no way I'm even going to consider selling the car until then.

As for my grades, I'll be honest I didn't take the first year seriously, and i got really bad grades. This year I read everything I was supposed to, did my homework often times ahead of time and did really good on tests. I'll still be able to graduate with a decent GPA if I keep it up.

As for the job, the biggest problem that we have is lack of leadership. We had a director who retired about 6 months ago, and we still haven't hired anybody to replace him. That's when everything started going downhill. There is no sense of direction, organization or anything in the company, everybody just pretty much does whatever they want to do. Having financial obligations is what has kept me from quitting my job. I suppose I am lucky to have a somewhat "real" job with "real" issues, because most people don't get a chance to experience the "real" world until they're out of school. At my current job I'm able to learn through experience and my mistakes don't have as great consequences as they would in the business world.

 

Even though I've finished school and am now in "the real world" - I did much the same as you, minus the "not going into debt" as I did take out student loans.

I worked 20-30 hours per week (depending on the semester) - full-time when possible during all holiday/spring/summer breaks, getting a 2nd "meaningless" job to fill the gaps in the summer if my "proper" job wouldn't up my hours, often working 50-60 hours per week during those times.

My advice? your job is somewhat career-related, depending on what you want to do with your degree. That's a definite advantage when looking for jobs post-college, so the bullshit you're putting up with now is actually quite worth it when looking at things on the whole.

I made sure to ALWAYS have a career-related PAYING job, simply becuase I knew that I would need that experience to land a job after college and not have to spend 3-5 beating the "recent graduate" stigma. With my combined experience I've put in almost 4 years of work now within my field, it'll be 6 by the time I look to move positions, not this coming summer but the summer after - a lot better positioned than my counterparts who didn't get internships and career-related jobs during school for sure.

I'd advise against taking time off of school, simply becuase now that I don't go to school - I know it'd be very hard for me to start up a full-time course of study and go back to the "broke college student" lifestyle.

As far as your workplace lacking leadership, see if there aren't areas you can help out in - speak with your manager or whomever the appropriate party is, and see if you can put your management minor to work, granted you won't be able to take over the role of the person who left, but perhaps adding some "management-type" tasks into your role might make you feel more empowered, help the company gain SOME (however small) stable footing and make you feel more invested in you work. I generally find that the more invested I am in my work and my responsibilities, the more I enjoy them, no matter how small they might be.

best of luck to you, it's only a few years until you finish and you sound like you've got your head screwed on straight - sometimes you just have to put up with bullshit to get the desired outcome in the end. It's life. Welcome to it

 

Ill be 21, I feel like im having a crisis at least once a month. Your not alone man. Just do what makes you happy, that what im trying to do.

 

im 20 now...i love school...i have three part time jobs a double major and a minor..fortunately my jobs permit to work as many or as few hours as i want. currently im doing ok working only a few hours a week. i will be paying for school next year (parents paid up til now..instate school) ... stick with work..it will pay for itself in ways aside from the wages...if you need to, dump the car...im still driving my first car from when i was 16 and dont regret one bit not financing something nicer..but to finish it....finish school now..you have how many more years to work full time?