I’ve been kind of desperate the last month or so trying to find SOMETHING to major in, but each time the answer comes up with way too much mathematics courses. I decided this past semester that I have no desire to go beyond precalculus. That class nearly broke me, and my first engineering class decided that careers in which mathematics were heavy were not for me. I’ve always been interested in computer generated art, and think I could be pretty good at it if I had the proper training in it. Is there a related degree for it? Is it something that would pay back the bills eventually? I’m just tossing things in the air, and seeing where they land at this point. I’d also be willing to listen to suggestions on how to decide what it is I want to do, because I don’t have all that many interests, and most of them are things I’d not be able to make money on, not unless I was super good at it.
Math never stuck for me in class, because I was not doing anything with it I loved.
Find something you are passionate about, and then the tools to fullfill it come easily.
a bored mind, is a hard mind to teach.
What about engineering, but of a more whimsical nature?
Have you thought of majoring in sustainable engineering?
Can you save the world?
Depends how passionate you are about 3D graphics. If you want to make a living in it, you’re going to be very unstable and broke for a while after school. Technical schools like animation mentor and such are very expensive too. I actually made this mistake. I was studying mechanical engineering and changed to film because I was having issues with math and I also loved helping in a short film. Now a few years later, I got my bachelor’s degree in film and work making corporate video but I’m not happy with the pay and am transitioning over to computer programming to get a better salary to raise my family. I’ll probably get a master’s degree in computer science.
Could I make the sacrifice and go to Hollywood and pursue my dream of filmmaking? Sure but there’s no guarantee of making it but there’s a guarantee that my family will suffer.
So, the moral of the story for me is, I should have pursued a stable career and passionately pursued my film dreams as a hobby. At the end of the day, if I make good money then I can make my films but if I’m broke…I can’t raise a family or make films.
If you are aspiring to work in the arts it would be wise to have something to fall back on. A back up plan and something to supplement your income is a very realistic approach.
Back when a college education cost about $11,000.00 (out of state, half-that “in” …), and somebody else was paying for it, I opted for the “business” option of a computer-science degree, which sent me to boring accounting classes instead of Calculus II. (My wife did the opposite, and she still questions what I ever found so difficult about calculus … :rolleyes: “Well, I did, and you’re still beautiful,” is my usual reply, but I digress …)
Turns out the diploma did nothing for me except to get me my first job (at the same University). No one ever asked me if I had a college degree, and I never used any knowledge I had learned there. Everything I know about computer programming, I taught myself.
Today, when a diploma at the same public University costs 14 times as much (and counting …), I either would drop-out immediately, or never sign up for college at all. Learn to be a surveyor. Learn to drive a truck. Spend $150,000 buying your first little house, instead of being in hock for what will most likely turn out to be a useless education such that you can never buy your first house and will instead be paying rent forever.
You’ll get that degree in whatever-it-is and discover that there’s a shop down the street stuffed full of people from Bangladesh, working under the L-1 visa program for what the United States considers to be a Bangladesh company (not an American one), therefore working for Bangladesh wages under Bangladesh conditions … but, doing your job. Or, you will apply for a job and be asked what is your work-permit status. If you’re hired, which you won’t be, you’ll be the only person there not using H-1B (or a similar “artist” non-resident visa).
You can be certain that the winds of change are blowing, and beginning to blow the other way (at last), but you’re the one in college now, accumulating all that debt which, by careful design, you cannot discharge in bankruptcy. (There are colleges today who are fighting to get their greasy hands on Social Security income held by older students who had still believed that college was the ticket to a better life, in order to repay hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of student loans that those people had taken on.) Americans owe multiple trillions of dollars in these loans.
My candid advice to you, then, is: drop out of college immediately, get a job (like driving a truck) which so far has not been superseded by “imports” (although many companies have tried), stop accumulating more student-loan debt, and wait for the political wind to realize once again that an educated population is important to a country. When affordable college education once again becomes affordable for you, as it was for me, then you can choose a major. Pick a school in town, so you can live in your house while you attend, and splurge on the more-expensive parking permit for your paid-for car. You can make $80,000 a year driving a truck.
This is not bitterness, nor is it a political rant. You were born at a time in which people believed that commerce could do everything … even though the people who were saying it were themselves the beneficiaries of socialism: the GI Bill. Nations play out the parable of the Prodigal Son in everything that they do: they continue stubbornly along until they are confronted with the reality that they’ve sunk as low as they can go. Only then do they turn around and remember the life they always could have chosen. Don’t be wearing $150,000 in debt when that happens. If the cards you have been dealt cannot be played to win, don’t play. Eventually, your nation will find a way (as they once did) to deal you a winning or at least winnable hand. Until then, the financial proposition has zero probability of return. Since you are still young, time is on your side.
“Opt out. Drop out.” (It kills me to say such a thing, but, “numbers don’t lie.”)
Yay, this thread again. Do you remember what happened the last time?
Let me ask you a couple of things. How much do you make a year, and are you using your college education?
Sundials, you can’t just tell a kid to drop out of college. I’m pretty sure you still include your degree on your resume and I’m sure it adds some value. That little diploma does open up more doors than you think. A university diploma says that you can finish something and you have the discipline and criteria to learn and grow.
What I think is a waste of time is an art degree or a technical degree in 3D graphics or something similar. I’ve seen dozens of people end up having to take some crappy job to pay the student debt and have very little chance of getting a job in 3D. It’s better to get a degree in something that is in demand and that you pursue your artistic endeavors on the side.
What jobs are always in demand:
- Engineering
- Building things
- Making food
No matter if the apocalypse happens, those jobs will still exist and still generate income. If the maths in Engineering isn’t your thing, consider becoming a technician: actually building the stuff.
I agree that a college diploma is important, and that higher education, like health care, is supposed to be something that remains affordable. But what we have done, on both counts, is precisely the opposite. Any and every kid who attends the University that I attended now pays about $50 an hour … and about a fourth of that (they don’t deny it) is to pay off the debts that the college has somehow accumulated.
It’s ridiculous beyond measure for a kid to incur debts in excess of the cost of a starter-house, just to better himself. We did not experience this, and, when we graduated, American companies were actively seeking American college graduates. But, somehow, for our children, “we threw an Am-er-i-can Flag in their face.” And so, families really do find that they must make a pragmatic choice that we once thought unthinkable: “is there a return-on-investment for a college education, today?” Yes, absolutely, there ought to be. There is supposed to be.
When I said, above, that “the winds of change are beginning to blow,” I mean that. So, I don’t mean that a kid should never get a college degree. What I mean is that “the storms are too rough out there for you to set-sail now.” Colleges are beginning to climb down from their ivory towers (partly because the jobs of “tenured professors” are beginning to be called into question …) and to realize that the unthinkable is happening: the students aren’t showing up. But “denial” is a deep-set human emotion.
Therefore, my advice is simply that you should wait it out. If you do something else with your life for a few years, you’ll probably be able to get that $150,000 diploma for roughly the $3,000-$11,000 that we paid for the same thing. Not too soon from now, America’s going to realize that those trillions of dollars are never going to be repaid, and that they were unconscionable from the start. So, why saddle yourself with that kind of debt, when by staying in-harbor you can avoid it? Fold the cards, step away from the table, and wait for the dealer to get sacked. 
You can certainly find something to do in the world of 3D, and creative arts in general, in the meantime. You don’t have to abandon your passion. You’re merely saying, “Just Say No!” to unconscionable debt. (And thereby, I think, helping to drive the social change that is too-long now in coming.)
I disagree that a college degree is important. The knowledge obtained through college is very useful, the degree itself is just a document that let’s others, such as potential employers, know that others attest to the fact that one has completed a series of tasks that require a certain level and type of knowledge to complete.
The knowledge itself can be obtained through other, significantly cheaper, means. So it depends, if you’re looking for knowledge there are plenty of ways to get it, but if you want others to know you have that knowledge then you may want the degree.
One could argue that financially there’s little difference, depending on the field of expertise you choose. If you get a degree you might be able to obtain a higher paying job right out of college, but you’ll have boat loads of debt to pay off. If you learn on your own you’ll need to prove to employers that you have the necessary knowledge by working for them at lower pay and advancing over time, but you won’t have loads of student debt to pay off so you can afford to live off the lower pay.
Additionally a college degree is not a guarantee that you’ll get a higher paying job shortly after you graduate, lots of people don’t so both routes bear risks. Student loan defaults are sky rocketing these days because graduates are not making enough money to pay them off.
The hundreds of thousands of people working in industries such as logistics and tech. and the thousands of people finding success running their own business would stress that you are absolutely wrong, numbers don’t lie you know 
By the way, are you a truck driver yourself, why not practice what you preach, show them that they can succeed in this area even after everyone and their dog signs on and are on the road?
An interesting read for those looking into a college education
New Data Gives Clearer Picture of Student Debt
Basically the article suggests that if you were going to attend a university you’d want to go to a 4 year or ‘selective 4 year’ college. Community and for-profit colleges leave you with a good chance of being worse off financially and of those who do find a job they don’t seem to be making much, if any, more than their non college educated counterparts.
As of 2010 student loan defaults for community college grads was over 30% while those graduating from highly selective 4 year schools had a 6% student loan default rate. The least selective 4 year schools had a 16% default rate and for-profit school grad defaults stood at 28%. As I understand it those numbers have been continuing to rise since then.
Atr1337 , there’s a certain cap on salaries and certain positions not available to people without degrees. That’s just the facts of life. Recruiters will choose those with more education, it’s just the easiest way to filter out so many applications. If you have a good referral then there might be an exception. There’s only a few fields that are flexible enough to not require an education and still pay well such as programming. But even then, college forces you to learn crap you’d rather skip on lynda.com, it makes you a critical thinker, you better understand how the world works, and you are more likely to have a broader perspective which many employers are looking for.
You can make it on an Associates Degree from a technical college if you go for something that is in demand. I started life at a 4 year college as an art major, dropped out when I discovered I didn’t want to be a starving artist, and spent 2 years learning programming.
Now I make 3x the median income for my area and I’m quite happy satisfying my creative side nights and weekends on projects I want to do. Your mileage may vary but having only a high school diploma generally won’t get you very far.
But don’t just drop out of school altogether, that’s completely bone headed-unless you’re joining the military which isn’t a bad deal.
Actually, if you troll many job boards today, you are finding that “a four-year degree” is not listed as a requirement nearly so much anymore. The trend away from the pursuit of higher education is growing, and will continue to grow until social policies are reversed.
In the 60’s and 70’s and 80’s, you could go to college, and find a job that favored your degree when you got out. (You could also walk into a thriving community hospital, and actually get treated there, without filing for bankruptcy thereafter.) But those “old saws” simply do not apply anymore. We of “that generation” need to realize what “kids” already know:
- A college education today is not worth the astounding amount of money paid to get it.
- “The rest of the world” is brimming with people who can be brought here under non-immigrant visa programs to do your job, because it costs less and because worker-protection laws do not apply. These people will bring their college educations with them, and their diplomas will never be questioned. 19th Century labor practices, including peonage and indentured servitude, are alive and well in the 21st.
… and we should be sickened by these thoughts. Enough to do something about them. The premise that “commerce will take care of the public interest better than government can” was never true. We were the beneficiaries of this, although we did not know it at the time. Our children and grandchildren, meanwhile, are being robbed of their present and their future. There are none so blind as those who will not see.
Another thing that might be working against higher education is the abundance of teaching material available for a low price or even for free over the internet. For instance, Youtube has videos on how to do virtually everything from programming to plumbing to cooking like a high-end restaurant chef.
Though there is a dual effect actually, and that is the internet may be starting to make some people less likely to hire professionals to do needed work in their house because they can just figure out how to do it themselves (though it’s not going to create a crises in the service industry anytime soon because not everyone wants to do it themselves and some tasks are just too complex for a simple video to explain).
This is exactly the reason why I value an actual education. There are too many people these days who read a guide or watch a video online and then assume they are an expert on something.
Then again I’m fortunate enough to live in a country where all education is free.
see if you can take some aptitude test or counseling to understand what direction will be good for you.in my opinion,3d is better if you already have talent towards it-getting through training is possible but in art fields talent is important.
… and where you can go to the hospital.
It is estimated that within two years a four-year diploma will cost a quarter of a million dollars.
Bills are already being circulated in various states to close public colleges and sell the land off to private real-estate investors. Another proposal, apparently serious, is to convert colleges with their dormitories into workshops for L-1 Visa “foreign companies.” The dorms would house the workers … this is less-expensive than the “extended stay hotels” now being used. (Notice how many are nearby to companies like Randstad …)
Folks in America (my country …) in the 21st Century really know almost nothing about history. If you asked them what an “indentured servant” was, or what was “a peon” or “peonage,” or what the 13th Amendment says, or why Northern industrial interests lobbied so hard to remove “… or involuntary servitude …” from its text, then you would get a blank stare from an American. But you would not get such a stare from an Indian national who knows he has two years to go: he’s living it, and in the worst possible way. (I saw seventeen young men in business suits march out of a two-bedroom apartment … in a tony neighborhood of Nashville, Tennessee. There were sleeping bags all over the floor.) They “owe their souls to the comp’ny store.” They don’t have cars, don’t have a wife, don’t have a life. They are: indentured. “Illegal as hell, but there they are.”
The thing to do, I frankly state, is to hole-in and wait it out. Pursue that 3D career, but not a college degree. It will be at least ten years before things start to turn around: the TPP treaty will be ratified, unread, and Jeb Bush will be appointed to two terms as President by the non-auditable computers that count the votes of an unverifiable pool of voters. (Those who bother to show up, anyway.) The legislatures will continue to take their “free speech” by the millions. Of dollars. Our Prodigal Son is not yet staring at the pig.
And you can, in fact, teach yourself anything. If you’re self-disciplined, prepare a sample of good work, and accumulate a retinue of references who will speak well of you … this being probably the single most-important thing of all … you can enter a career, or change careers. It doesn’t depend on your sheepskin. It depends on you.
Therefore, yes: “opt out, drop out” of a non-education system that will bury you a quarter-million dollars under, before it first hands you a shovel. The more people do this, the more the pressure will build (among shocked parents, if no one else) to turn this thing around.
P.S.: I am not alone in this sentiment. http://theinnovativeeducator.blogspot.com/2011/02/college-myth-why-college-isnt-worth.html, written over four years ago by Leslie Nielsen in a blog titled The Innovative Educator(!), said it extremely well:
While it is becoming more evident to disillusioned college grads who are victims of an unfolding education hoax on the middle class that’s just as insidious, and nearly as sweeping, as the housing debacle, there is little thought given to the fact that we place kids in schools with a promise that if they do well in school and then in college, they’ll be rewarded with a life time of success and opportunity not otherwise available to them. We need to start rethinking what we’re taking as a given in school today, because the reality is, we’re lying. Our new crop of college grads, known today as generation debt because of the huge pile of debt attached to their diploma, have no real guarantee of a job. In fact, what was true for the parents of today’s kids, isn’t true for them. As a result, more and more oftensmart students and their parents are also beginning to understand that a college education is not what it’s cracked up to be.
… and the list of linked-to articles in http://theinnovativeeducator.blogspot.com/2011/07/is-college-really-for-all.html, also published in 2011, is even more shocking. A great deal has to do with the financial proposition, including one link: “Is Higher Ed the Next Bubble To Burst?”
That type of thing is only possible if you force a society where you only keep a tiny percentage of your income and the rest goes to the state to spend on entitlements (that is actually the case in Europe). I can see why a lot of young people find this enticing, then again there are many of them who worship the government as well.
I think it may be far more effective to work on making the universities more efficient with their resources and have more emphasis on providing good quality scholarships to students who have shown that they are ready for college (as opposed to just making everything free). Also, a good education doesn’t require having classes at the Ivy League schools (which are at the top in terms of price), a lot of smaller collages can get you a quality degree that can land you in jobs not necessarily inferior to what you can get if you attend a pricier school.