College boy?

Not me.

How about a little backstory first, shall we? I graduated high school a semester early with a wife and a 3 month old son waiting for me to get a real job, which I did. Lived with the in-laws for a few years too, trying to save up the cash and work my way up the job ladder so I could get a loan. The joke on me was that since I didn't want to waste any money on other debts, I had a zero credit rating. Anyways, the long and the short of it is that I did purchase a home, then purchased another one last year which is where I am currently living. It's a better home than my first one, with better neighbors by far (I see more of my neighbor's yellow lab Sam and local horses in my yard than I do people).

During the time period before I purchased my second home (which took a great deal of our savings for a down payment, the bastards wanted 20 percent! No, the bank we used aren't really bastards, they are actually pretty damn awesome and I love our loan officer) I tried out online classes for a year or so. I actually did pretty awesome in them, never scoring below an A. However, there is slim pickings for an anthropologist who does not wish to spend months away from his family on a dig, no matter how exciting said dig might be or mow much the pay might be. Same goes for teaching in my area. There is a reason I went online for classes instead of driving 2 hours to go to a physical class (I did say I lived in rural Missouri, didn't I?).

So what does this all mean? I figured out a few things that were important, namely that my wife did not want to move out of the area and be too far from her family. Then I checked out the job situation around here, which is namely seasonal work or commission jobs. I decided, quite easily, that college was not for me and have started looking into other occupations, such as home inspections, gun training instructor, and the like. Basically, jobs that would help to supplement our income as well as giving me a teachable skill that I could pass on to my children (so that they will not be in the same pickle I was, errr, am) with less of an investment.

Now, do I think college is a waste of time? To be honest, no, but only if you don't have to take out loans to pay for it. I am perfectly happy playing armchair anthropologist and amateur historian, especially since there is no cost needed for those, just a library or a site like Gutenberg is all that you need. Hell, the news just the other night was talking about how many graduates are unemployed (and I bet the number would be even higher if they didn't count the number of graduates that were working low-wage jobs where their degrees mean shit). It is a huge scam right now, what with the tuition having risen 600% in the past 20 years while inflation hasn't.

tl:dr? Don't go to college unless you have the cash. Learn a trade instead. But that is just my opinion.