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auyi @lemmy.world

How far did you go with your studies and are you satisfied with it?

I’m 33 and dropped out after finishing 9th grade (June 2007) because I got pregnant & my priorities shifted to say the least. Satisfied with how my life turned out.

39 comments

  • I initially dropped out of college because I wasn’t ready for it, twice. Went right into the workforce and felt a lot of struggle for many years and learned a lot about people, power, and the value of knowing how to open doors.

    Later, in my late 30’s with an established professional career I went back to college at nights to work towards a bachelor’s degree for a field I already worked in. I found the education much more valuable this time around, and frankly, I was making better decisions at that point. I got a lot out of it, even with a great deal of the material being familiar, and even wish I had selected a major I didn’t have experience in so that I might have learned even more.

    I’ll note that going back to school didn’t make economic sense for me since I had already established a career, I wanted to prove to myself I could and set a better example for my daughter. I probably wouldn’t have gone back if UoPeople hadn’t been so dirt cheap and flexible, big shout out to them for being so awesome and accessible. I spent way more failing twice than succeeding once :).

    While I didn’t need the degree to get where I have gotten, I recognize that it may have gotten me some steps faster and certainly helps me not get prefiltered out by HR software for desirable roles I am well qualified for. I also recognize that I learned some really valuable things from being in the workforce first, that probably positively impacted my drive, social skills, and ultimately my earning ceiling.

    I’m happy with my journey through education, I learned a lot both times around and eventually got a degree I didn’t need.

  • I stopped at getting an associate's degree. I'm happy with my career and I really don't want to go through any more schooling so I'm sticking with it.

  • Hischool dropout. I later took a year of electronics with the intention of studying avionics, but it was put in hold due to mandatory military service in 2005. Then it was further put on hold because of a job offer that was tempting. And then further put on hold due to starting a nice career in 2008. I'm now 41, and I've long since concluded that I will never go back to studying. If I were to graduate with a masters in avionics or similar, I would earn maybe a 3rd of what I do now, plus my current job and career is pretty nice and cushy.

    As for happy, yeah, I think so. I'm sure if I had any completed education, it would've probably been a lot easier the times I was between jobs. But at the same time, I suspect that if I had gone the traditional IT route I would've ended up in a more traditional IT job with all the nastiness that comes along with it; support tickets, fixed work hours, active directory, fixing printers, and worst of all: users.

    I tried having a "normal" job, but I fled after a few years, concluding that normal jobs are for normal people. I hate having a fixed or semi-fixed work schedule. I absolutely detest timesheets. And having to show up somewhere specific in the morning is simply something for which I was not built.

    So yeah, it was a long and hard journey to get where I am, but I'm satisfied with where I ended up. And I did so purely based on merit (and some luck).

  • Got my bachelor's, mostly on scholarship and about a quarter covered by loans. Now I'm working for a company that paid for a master's degree. I might do an MBA, but no rush. I would feel very differently about it if I had to pay tuition myself.

    I'm satisfied with my career trajectory. I'd be just fine without ever going for an MBA. I enjoy graduate-level studies and the people it puts me in contact with though; it can be a lot easier than undergrad.

  • I’m satisfied and proud of myself (sounds ego-ish but hear me out). When I was a kid, I was in a school for children that could (or would) not learn. All you learnt was basics of life and at 18 you just work without a degree.

    I worked my way up in education from lower education to now having a bachelor degree in Finance (the exact degree everyone told me, I would never be able to get).

    I’m currently taking a bit off, trying to find work and might go for master degree or something else in my country that’s equivalent to the CPA of US.

    I often silently say Fuck You to the family members who always told me “you can’t do it”, “just give up” and that shit.

  • I could never afford to finish my bachelor's degree, and honestly never really cared to, until companies started using software for hiring that filters out applications that don't have degrees, regardless of experience. (Software industry) So, I did a degree that basically allowed me to do a minimal amount of studying and take the final exams without having to sit through months of lectures and graded homework that wouldn't be useful because I already knew the material for the most part from over a decade of experience. Took me about 18 months, working a more than full time job and no breaks, with a few general education credits being transferred from the short time I did attend school originally. Helped me get a job pretty much right away since my applications were finally reaching managers.

  • I got my bachelor’s and worked in the industry with that degree for about a decade. Now I’m not in any related field and doing some professional certification courses. Part of me feels like I should’ve done a totally different major, part of me feels like I should go get an associate’s or master’s, but I probably wouldn’t have wound up in this field without going through my original career so at least a different bachelor’s degree probably wouldn’t have gotten me where I am now.

  • Did 2 years of a 4 year degree before dropping out for a myriad of reasons.

    I did well enough through high school that I never learned how to put in the effort to really study, and between that and the bad pay and working conditions I saw in the industry I was heading into, I said, "Fuck this, I'd rather go back to selling fish. I'll make just as much for half the effort anyway." I hated retail, but the work was pretty easy and I liked the people I worked with, so I stuck around for 10 years before I had enough and left to focus on another job and trying to start my own business.

    Definitely not happy with where I am, but that has less to do with school and more to do with life circumstances like getting hit with a medical condition that knocked me out of the job force for the first 4 years of my 30s and right as I was trying to get my business working for myself off the ground. So now I find myself trying to re-enter work in a new field in an area where tourism is the economy, meaning there's few other industries in the area apart from retail.

    I will say, though, that I feel like I learned more after leaving school than I ever did in school, and that education almost killed my love for learning.

39 comments