Don't Go Anywhere

[blas87]

Or do anything.

Ya know, I was about halfway ready to make a thread about people always nagging a person to get back to college *zomgRIGHTNOWyoudoNOTwanttoworkhereforever!!!*, get the hell out of his idiot town, etc etc. I mean, even if they have a point, it's not always possible to do what you want when you want.

Then the opposite happened.

I was basically told by someone that....I should just stay at this job and in this shit town the rest of my life.

Now, I have a feeling, a deep feeling, the only reason this person said it to me is because they are a huge introvert/loner, and they are not comfortable ever doing anything involving effort of going somewhere or some place they don't want to. I've brought up my little "hopes and dreams" before in front of this person, and all I've gotten back were harsh snips and comments about wanting to live in the desert being stupid and how I should stay here where I know people. I also have a feeling this person feels more for me at this point than I do for him, because I am NOT going to put my future on hold because someone else is adament that they are staying here forever.

Anyway, I mentioned that I do need to consider going back to school here, soon, and I will have an opportunity as soon as I move back home with mom and dad. If I can get a decent amount of my car paid off, I could go part time at work, or I could just take mostly online classes, and get a degree. The way I said it, was that I need to get to school so I can do something more with my life than press buttons and listen to people nitpick at everything I do "wrong".

What was I told?

"Oh, you want to waste a bunch of money to get a degree, then find out the only place that will hire you is....here? Ha ha ha!"

And I tried to swallow that hard, ignore the urge to punch, and just fired back, "There are better jobs than here. This is fine for anyone who needs full time steady work with benefits. But I don't want to do this for the rest of my life."

Whiney little bitch boy fires back at me, "This is the largest employer in the area. This place keeps over a thousand people employed. You want to give that up to go to school and move to the desert?!"

[Rapscallion]

The thing they're missing is that schooling such as that takes a few years, and by then the economy should be in a better position to allow you a far better job - hopefully.

Rapscallion

[Andara Bledin]

Yeah... I'm thinking the person telling you not to try is the sort that fears change and is so afraid of failure that they will never become much of anything at all.

You, however, are far too vibrant and ambitious to let what you are now be all that you will ever be in the world.

I can't imagine that you won't make something of yourself beyond just some nameless cog working in a factory. And even if it does fall out that you end up back in the factory, at least you'll have some stories about what you did with your life other than just working their your whole life.

^-.-^

[MaggieTheCat]

Sounds sort of like my grandma, except my grandma is less sarcastic and more paranoid. When she found out I was planning on moving to Texas to be with my (now husband) boyfriend, she just about shit bricks. She was absolutely convinced that I would
1) hate it
2) miss my friends/family too much and not be able to make new friends
3) get mugged
4) get raped
5) get kidnapped
6) go into poverty because I wouldn't be able to find a job
and that I should stay home. After a year or so of me living in Texas, after getting married and buying a house with my husband and being happier than I ever was in Wisconsin, she was still asking my mother, "So when is Maggie going to grow up and come back home? Texas is a horrible place and she needs to leave there now!"

She even went so far as to insist that a certain purse that I use regularly, one that cost maybe $20 at Target, absolutely must NEVER be used because it would draw FAR too much attention and I was sure to either get mugged, raped, kidnapped, or some combination of the above if I were to use it.

[blas87]

I knew you'd be able to relate, Mag, since you were once in my place in this lovely little state once before as well.

I figure, even if things don't go as planned, there are internships and places to reach higher at my job. If I got a degree, I could be an engineer, or a programmer, something like that.

Though I haven't made up my mind officially yet, still leaning more towards a paralegal, I know that in time, everything will sort itself out.

I just wish people wouldn't tromp on someone for wanting to better themselves. I'd never forget where I came from or who stuck with me through the bad times at work, who my friends were and who I had the best of times at work with. I'd never forget the times we laughed so hard we got in trouble.

[Rapscallion]

From friends who have gone to university etc, the best advice is to go for a subject you will enjoy.

Rapscallion

[blas87]

Interesting thing, I've never ever been good at math and science. Key ingredients for an engineering degree. Yet, lately at work, I've been being told by an engineer that I should look into it. There's been various projects lately at work that are actually doing well because they are allowing engineers to work with the real people doing the work, not the fuzzies who have no idea how to do it. So, us cogs are working with the engineers and interacting, teaming up, and one of them actually told me that I should look into it because of how well I do with the machinery and how well I interact and explain things to others.

I was really, really surprised. I immediately tried to put it off and say "No way, I'm no good at that stuff," to which I was told, "Blas, I barely graduated high school and didn't go to college until I was your age, I would have never thought I could do this, either. If you can pass the test to get into the tech school, you can be taught to be good at it."

[MaggieTheCat]

That's really awesome, blas. And you can definitely go places with an engineering degree; a friend of ours is an engineer (I forget what kind specifically, I know she works with laying water pipes for the city) and she just got promoted and transferred to Houston. Kinda sucks for us, but it's only about 4 hours away so she can still visit on weekends when she's not busy. But, she is highly sought after in her field for the work she does.

Even if you decide not to go with engineering, you should do what you feel is right for you. If that's continuing to work where you are, then fine. If it's going back to school, great. If it's moving and going to work/school somewhere else...sure! Everyone told me I should go to school, get a degree, oh Maggie you're so smart you shouldn't waste it by not going to school. I think now that that is kind of insulting; so if I don't go to school, I'm "wasting" my intelligence/talent? B.S. I went to school for 4 years but have next to nothing to show for it because I couldn't pick a subject I was dedicated enough to to follow through with. I ended up going to work fulltime and even though it was kind of a crappy job in the end, it paid decently and I was able to save up a bunch of money (which allowed me to move and start my own business, which is what I do now), and I learned a ton of things after being there for over 3 years and being in a lot of different positions. I was much happier doing that than going to school, even if the job wasn't ideal.

But don't let butthurt people like your "friend" or my grandma hold you back from what you feel is right for you.

[ExRetailDrone]

Ugh, I don't understand people like that. I grew up in a podunk town in Michigan, where the largest employer is the mining industry, so I can relate to the people you deal with and the small-town life with no opportunity in sight. And my ex thought like your friend does...he couldn't understand why I wanted to try to get the hell out of that black hole. Honestly, if I had stayed with him, I would most definitely still be there, and that thought is disheartening to me.

I can relate to the college thing, too. I went to college for a year and a half right out of high school, but because of my depressive issues and simply just not being ready, I had to drop out or flunk out. I didn't go back to working on my degree again until I was 23, which I did completely online, and it still took me 5.5 years to finish it. You just have to do what's best for you and go at your own pace, not whatever society deems acceptable.

I think that you'll break free of that place eventually. You seem to have the drive and true desire to do it. Just don't let anyone hold you back, it's not worth your happiness to keep other people marginally happy. I broke free of my hometown area and while things might not be ideal where I am now, they would be so much worse had I never left. I wish you all the best, small town life is really difficult for those who are not suited for it

[Greenday]

Honestly, it just sounds like the opinions of someone who is too scared to move out and do something with their life. And if you do it, that means that they are just scared. But if you don't, then it proves they are right.

[BlaqueKatt]

Interesting thing, I've never ever been good at math and science. Key ingredients for an engineering degree.

Ok Blas, you are a very smart cookie, are you really bad at math, or did your teachers not have a teaching style that worked for you?

storytime:

Blaquekatt was homeschooled for several years, and because she "wasn't good at math" and didn't like it at all, when she returned to public school for 9-12 she was put in "consumer math", how to balance a checkbook, how to make a budget, etc. teacher said I didn't belong, bumped me to "pre algebra", few weeks of that, new teacher said I didn't belong, bumped me to algebra I. That teacher was AMAZING, he had 40 years of teaching and understood "not everyone learns the same." He taught in a more "applied math" not 2x+7=17, but more "if you're building a planter this is how you figure out the amount of wood you need" it is algebra because you're solving for an unknown. geometry was easier because it's just putting the numbers into a formula-Algebra II, I had a horrible teacher, I was failing. Chemistry teacher had me put into physics, I was one of the only passing students in that class, not because I was "smarter than the other kids" but because that teacher had a teaching style that worked really well for me, but not anyone else in my class.

College professors are more likely to have more than one teaching approach, not because their better teachers, but because they have fewer restrictions than a middle or high school teacher. And if you want to get good at something, you practice, math and science are no different in that respect than say, learning how to run the overly complex dweezelFlange machine you were just trained on yesterday. Yup today you're having difficulty running it, but by next week because you've had more practice, you'll run it better than your trainer.


I do a TON of math at work(you most likely do as well without even realizing it, it creeps into everything, math=brain ninja*), so to keep my basic skills sharp, I have an app on my smartphone-well several actually, but my favorite is "math workout"(free on android)-simple addition, subtraction, multiplication and division(8+3, 2x4, 12/6).

and two books you may want to get from your library:
100 things you didn't know, you didn't know-how math explains your world.
and
Mathematics in 10 lessons: the grand tour

both are written by mathematicians in a manner that is much easier to understand(they write with the assumption the reader knows nothing about math, but not in a condescending manner), and there are a ton more books that are quite similar in nature, look at the "people who bought this book also bought" sections, and check your library, even if you don't read the entire book but just a few chapters from each book(not all at once) to bore yourself to sleep in the morning(that's what I used the first book I listed for )-you're still learning.

*you ever have 3 different batches of different products to run in your 12 hour shift and have to figure out how many pieces per hour you have to run, how much time you have to switch settings/change machines, what speed your machine has to be set at to run efficiently enough that you meet all three goals? Congratulations, you just did a whole slew of math.

[blas87]

Well, I'll put it to ya this way, my first high school, I got behind the rest of the kids because I didn't make it past pre-algebra. By the end of sophomore year, you were supposed to have passed Algebra 2. I had repeated pre-algebra and barely passed algebra. Because that put me "at risk", at my second high school, I took algebra 1 again, and by then, most kids my age were past geometry and going into trig and calculus. I graduated high school at pre-geometry, that would cause me to not be allowed into a university (not that I cared back then).

But, I had multiple jobs where I had to balance a till. I've lived on my own since age 19. My bank account has only gone in the hole twice (once was due to card theft). My job is a lot of basic math, when it comes to reconciling how many units are in an order, etc etc.

But I've heard once you reach the age of "non traditional student", your high school transcript isn't so Bible anymore in regards to getting accepted, especially into a tech school or community college.

The tech school here just started 3 new engineering programs, one of which is suited purely for manufacturing/quality control/electrical/etcetc

[Andara Bledin]

Ok Blas, you are a very smart cookie, are you really bad at math, or did your teachers not have a teaching style that worked for you?

For math, having a good teacher is vital - unless you're a freak like me who can learn out of a book by going over the examples. But while I coasted through all my math classes, my brother struggled with his. His original teachers were so lackluster that he's never really gotten it. Our mother had to explain how fractions worked because none of his teaches ever had worth a shit.

College professors are more likely to have more than one teaching approach, not because their better teachers, but because they have fewer restrictions than a middle or high school teacher. And if you want to get good at something, you practice, math and science are no different in that respect than say, learning how to run the overly complex dweezelFlange machine you were just trained on yesterday. Yup today you're having difficulty running it, but by next week because you've had more practice, you'll run it better than your trainer.

This is also very true. Math is difficult to someone who doesn't practice it because you have to "burn" new pathways in your brain. The more you use those pathways, the easier it gets to keep using them, however, so that things that you had to think about become second nature.

I (being a freak who loves math) spend a lot of my free time doing math-based puzzles. Cross Sums (aka Kakuro [since everything's more legit in Japanese, or something >_> ) are something I enjoy a lot, and there's a game on Steam called Everyday Genius: Square Logic that takes the basic idea from Cross Sums and expands it to crazy levels. Steam says I've spent 220 hours playing that game...

But I've heard once you reach the age of "non traditional student", your high school transcript isn't so Bible anymore in regards to getting accepted, especially into a tech school or community college.

My brother was taking an electrical engineering course recently. He still has trouble with the algebra, but the fact that he never got through pre-algebra in high school doesn't seem to matter.

^-.-^

[blas87]

I'm glad that's proven to be true, Andara. That was one of my many excuses for not going back to school, because I did horrendously in high school. I'm not a genius but I'm nowhere near as dumb as my grades made me out to be. If I had ignored everyone around me and concentrated on my work harder, I could have done a lot better. If my math teachers hadn't been freakshows who'd rather knit or feed us oranges....I probably also would have done better.

[AdminAssistant]

The fact that I was able to get through College Algebra is due entirely due to the efforts of that professor and my high school advanced math/geometry teacher. The key was patience. Math doesn't come naturally to me as it seems to for some people, like Fiance. I need to write something out, even if it's a relatively simple sum. But because I am (and was) an 'A' student, I was expected to solve problems quickly. My first high school algebra teacher would fuss at me for taking too long to do quizzes and comment on how good my sister was at math. (My sister who is now an accountant.) Luckily that old bat retired and I got Mrs. W for Geometry. She had been teaching the 'remedial' math classes, so she was good at explaining complex concepts in a relatively simple way. I did so well in that class that I took Adv. Math with her...basically advanced algebra, beginning calculus and trigonometry. It was hard and a lot of work, but I walked out of the class with an A.

My College Algebra professor was the same way, and didn't even mind if you came up to him during an exam with a question. I managed to get through that class with an A as well. (He also never pulled that whole "All of you will need complex algebra everyday of your entire lives" nonsense. He was more, "Some of you need this to further your education, and some of you don't. Some of this will be useful, some of it won't. But if you will put forth genuine effort, you will be rewarded.")