Alternatives to the "College->Work" Path in America

[OMnoxious]

I am a community college student in Virginia, USA with above a 3.0 GPA and plans to transfer to a 4 year school after I'm finished with my associates degree. It's not that I am doing poorly, it's that I am fed up with the idea of a prepackaged life that my parents had, and the prepackaged life that is put down my throat and the throat of my generation by corporate America. This is not what I want for myself.

I do not like the idea of spending years of my life going to school, years of my life working some shit job just for a decent income, and years of my life spent on stress, paying back student loans, and just getting enough sleep to function for another day of monotony to pay the bills. Unfortunately, I live in a small town without many resources at my disposal. I am employed and make a decent amount of money, but I am not sure what my options are. My parents would FLIP OUT if I abandoned school in favor of a happier lifestyle outside of the norm, which is normal for people brainwashed by the machine to view people who take this path as "dysfunctional".

I can tell you for certain, I would be much happier living a meager life spending less time at work and more time with those I love than a grandiose show of wealth and greed going through the motions and putting my money back into the machine.

What are my options, RevLeft? I'm sure this is the best place to go for information regarding my options for an alternative lifestyle of sorts.

[Red_Banner]

Some of the reasons why I have not gone to college is being that we are in the USA, the colleges here expect us to "give back", that "community service" crap which I view as a backdoor to slavery.

Then they want you to waste your money and time with unrelated courses to make you "well rounded".

Not to mention the insane costs of college.

[OMnoxious]

I'm just curious sometimes if buying my girlfriend and I plane tickets to a European country offering state-paid college and not coming back is such a bad idea.

[argeiphontes]

Get some friends together and start a worker cooperative in your field. Keep your left ideology.

[cyu]

You might consider contacting the United Steel Workers http://www.usw.org/our_union/co-ops - regardless of whether you want to join them, they are seriously looking into worker co-ops. Given the resources they have available, they can probably do a lot more than you can alone. Even if you don't end up with anything officially related to USW, you can probably develop a lot of contacts that will be helpful to you.

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

I'm just curious sometimes if buying my girlfriend and I plane tickets to a European country offering state-paid college and not coming back is such a bad idea.

You'd be surprised at how hard it is to get legal residency permit. If you are to study, you have to apply for a student visa (and most countries nowadays charge foreign students), otherwise it is not valid, and said visa must be applied from the U.S. or wherever. The same must be done for residency. Citizenship generally granted after 5 years residency (must be renewed every 2 years).

Unless you have close relatives (they go to some lengths to verify your bonds, too, those scum at the immigration authorities) or someone who offers you a job and is willing to submit legal documents saying so to the immigration authority, getting to stay legally in a European country is very hard (unless you are wealthy, then you get special treatment). The process of applying can take upwards a year, and might entail you having to travel across the United States to the single embassy of whatever nation a year before actual departure.

The only time they make it somewhat easier for anyone to migrate is if there's a humanitarian catastrophe, then they get a bit laxer (ponder, a U.S. civil war), but otherwise, you can't get out.

My boyfriend's stuck in the U.S. forever because of it. Kill all borders.

[Rafiq]

I'd stay in school actually. If you have the option to make money, take it. The more comfortable your financial situation is, the more time and resources you'll be able to put in the movement. Don't be a moralist, have room for some pragmatism.

[Creative Destruction]

I'm just curious sometimes if buying my girlfriend and I plane tickets to a European country offering state-paid college and not coming back is such a bad idea.

My wife and I are doing this. We're going to go through language education and I'm getting my 2 year degree so I can study in Norway and she wants to work there. The long term plan is to have kids and make a life there.

Anyway, buck the system. Study what interests you and not what will be useful to a corporate master. If you can't find a job after college, start a worker co-operative. And remember that you have an entire world out there and learning a new language is easier today than it has ever been.

Part of the reason for Norway, aside from state-paid college, is that they have a lot of Meteorology jobs over there (which is what I want to study) whereas over here, getting a job in Meteorology usually means you have to go through the fucked up research system in this country (that basically makes RAs and TAs slaves via "internships") or to start your own consulting business. Somewhere down the line, you might get a good weather forecasting job with the government but unless you intend on going into broadcast meteorology, it's a pretty narrow field in this country... in that all the jobs have already been filled. On the other hand, in Norway, they're always looking for forecasters and researchers. The government is expected to sink more money into weather and climate research because of the potentially deleterious effects of climate change on the future of the country.

So, yeah. Keep your options open; realize there's an entire world outside of this shithole.

[vijaya]

I'm just curious sometimes if buying my girlfriend and I plane tickets to a European country offering state-paid college and not coming back is such a bad idea.

Don't come to Britain, things are just as bad here, maybe a little better but getting worse.

[HoboHomesteader]

Is college>work still a real thing in merca?

[cyu]

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/05/27/1211849/-Unemployment-and-underemployment-rate-among-college-graduates-shows-the-problem-isn-t-lack-of-skills

http://s3.amazonaws.com/dk-production/images/34015/large/College_Grad_joblessness.png

[Rugged Collectivist]

I feel the same way. I've only been in college for less than a semester and I already feel that I'm not really cut out for it. I'm starting to think I should quit before I go too far into debt. A psychology major kind of has to go to grad school and I'm overwhelmed as a freshman. I never thought it would be easy but I severely overestimated my ability to handle the stress.

I can't give you any practical advice since I'm in the same boat right now, but I wish you luck and I hope you find what you're looking for.

[HoboHomesteader]

YOu might consider living hella cheap, cutting down on or eliminating your cost of living. The less money you need to pay bills, the fewer hours you have to work, the more time you have to do other things.