just to add...college isnt for everyone. my most successful friends ended education at HS. my least successful friend went to USF on the parent's dime.

manual labor surely taught me not to want to do manual labor.. but manual labor guys get to stay in shape. life is funny.

i bet a true lawn/landscaper type would have blasted me into the weeds, in speed and technique.

and burnin...sorry. this trip wasnt about fun. next time bro.

After high school I dropped out of college and went to work at a truck brake shoe manufacture doing re-lines and new brakes.
It didn't take long to make the distinction between skilled labor and manual. I went back to school when I was 22 to a local polytechnic institute. After 20 some odd years on the tools (it wasn't easy but it was rewarding and enjoyable) I am teaching at the same place I learned my craft. I am looking forward to my first summer off in 25 years!

I was not the best student in college, that's for sure. As I look back on my education I wish my folks had said it's OK to pursue something I found fun. I got my degree more for them than myself, not that it hasn't opened some doors for me. I've tried to teach my kids that if you do something you love it won't be work and the money will come when people realize that you enjoy what you do, if you do it well.
For me, I can remember being on my step-grandfather's farm, shoveling cow dung from the pen the cows occupied just before going into the milking parlor, and thinking to myself 'So this is what Piled Higher and Deeper means.'
Yeah, it was sorta motivatin'.

I was not the best student in college, that's for sure. As I look back on my education I wish my folks had said it's OK to pursue something I found fun. I got my degree more for them than myself, not that it hasn't opened some doors for me. I've tried to teach my kids that if you do something you love it won't be work and the money will come when people realize that you enjoy what you do, if you do it well.
For me, I can remember being on my step-grandfather's farm, shoveling cow dung from the pen the cows occupied just before going into the milking parlor, and thinking to myself 'So this is what Piled Higher and Deeper means.'
Yeah, it was sorta motivatin'.

What I WISH I had DONE is what most European kids do during their early 20's: They take a semester off and just travel around. I was so focused on aviation and paying for my education that the notion of spending 6 months travelling around Europe on a Eurail pass was utterly foreign to me. Now I think it would have been the best thing to ever happen to me! I would probably have "grown up" about 10 years sooner! By the time I was handed the keys to a Boeing 727 in 1999 [Metaphor. Airliners don't have locks on their doors-] I was ready for it, but had I been handed those keys right out of college 10 years prior? Bad mistake. I had the knowledge and skill then to fly that plane, but not the experience to understand what COULD happen. What's more, I couldn't deal effectively at all with other human beings back then. In 1989 I was a child with a bunch of pilot licenses and no idea how to proficiently use them. If everything went right, I could have safely flown that 727 across the country. But if something had gone wrong, I would have drawn a blank and it could have gotten ugly.

My experience with 6 airlines now and 9000 hours, all but 2500 in airline service on Boeing jets lets me approach problems that crop up while flying with not just knowledge, but with skill, and with a background of learned knowledge that not only allows me to deal with the technical problem in front of me, but to also monitor the performance of my colleagues, and to monitor the progress of the flight. I cannot help but think that at the age of 22, if I had been sent to Europe and told that I needed to survive for 6 months....that I would have "grown up" far sooner. You see, I am certain that if I had spent those months as a vagabond around Europe, fending for myself, that I would have been able to come back to Florida, take a job as flight instructor, and probably be way more effective in that job, and on the following airline jobs, since I would be more assertive.

If I have a kid, I will insist that they take off at least one semester to work with the peace corp, or just travel around Europe.

N!

I guess my ethos is most like dipso's. But hey, buddy, your body won't hold up forever. Then you wonder why a very accomplished and successful tradesman ends up at some sales counter.

I'm still resisting because I pretty much hate the tradespeople that have replaced me. No work ethic and conscientiousness. Even the Hispanics are slackers any more.

I would have never made it in an office. I tried a few times. At the first sign of being back stabbed I went ballistic and quit. Don't you just love it when someone can't do a job and then blames that on you? :mad:

I never knew what I wanted to be when I grew up-and still don't.

I unloaded railcars in the Salina, KS sun. No problem, I enjoyed it. After work we went across the street and drank 3.2 beer. Life was good!

Education for me was always just a fact of life. My Mom -- just a mother, no real career path -- has a master's degree, and my Dad has more degrees than a thermometer. I think he got his third doctoral degree a few years ago, but I've lost track, really.

So I never really considered whether or not I would go to college or not. It was just a given. And it honestly had nothing to do with the fact that my Mom -- bless her heart -- was intent on using her sons to landscape the desert that we had built a house on.

Worked hard from my first paper route and work even harder today. I've always worked more then 40hrs a week. I worked two jobs starting with a paper route and bagging groceries. I graduated HS and my parents were like have a nice life. I worked a ton really going no where so I joined the Navy. 4yrs later I got out with the GI bill, worked two jobs while I completed a BSCE in 3yrs. Then I went to work at a company at 50-60hrs a week that progressed to 70 easy and I quit to work for the State to be with my wife. However, it felt like I had a ton of free time so I framed houses, built sheds & decks & fences, etc for a while until a friend (partner) moved away. Then I opened a minor body repair shop to make up the slack and then we started having kids so I sold that off. When the kids got a little older (6 & 4) I opened an ice cream/sandwich shop that I work evenings and weekends currently. So with a college degree or not I think I'm gonna work my butt off until my body/health says otherwise... I guess that's just what I do. Maybe I need counseling so I can relax. I can't sit still and when I do it drives me crazy or all I think about is that 'next' job/project.

all my jobs prior to school convinced me i needed a degree. so i got one. my jobs after my philosophy degree convinced me that i needed to get a trade. so i went back to school and i am now a respiratory therapist. RT is working out for me.

I don't think the 20 somethings are posting here in the thread. A lot of us have worked hard, you can see that reading these posts. I haven't heard of anyone digging dirt or picking apples for a long time. Like a generation or 2.

my first job was digging post holes, fixing sprinkler heads, and pruning peach trees. i sucked at it.

High School and College summers working for the local North American VanLines agent and finally called it quits after spending an entire day humping boxes up 3 flights in 100+ weather and didn't take a single break to pee...

After college, driving for a well known delivery company in a dark uniform, stained with sweat.. Supervisor job shortly there after along with a 50 lb weight gain..

I applied and was hired as a waiter in a Denny's restaurant in Daytona Beach, FL on my 16th birthday. It was absolutely horrid. I learned I wasn't cut out for customer service real quick. The Summer after my Freshman year of college I worked for Mayflower moving company in the same area of FL. All it took was carrying a Steinway and a granite coffee table up 7 flights of stairs in a beachfront condo to learn that I wasn't cut out for manual labor. Now I just wish that I had learned to weld for a living, or that my current ERP consulting gig was as easy as the Mayflower or Denny's gigs :D

That's funny, as my G-ma had a apple, cherries & peach orchard in South Haven, Mi. I worked on her farm in the summer for years (late 70s-late 80s ~10years)and when she would take us to town we'd do to the beach and Sherman's ice cream. When I got older I worked her farm and went to work at Hale's in SH to make a few extra bucks. Anyways, Sherman's ice cream is what I'm now selling. Kinda cool!

I remember when my great aunt rung 'the bell' my G-ma was PISSED because everyone came off the fields for lunch an hour early. LOL! Ah, the memories.... BTW I'm 37now soon to be 38 fwiw.

Damn Moses - You win this one hands down.....

seriously moses..i can't imagine road asphalt guys having a long and healthy lifespan. i worked with a seal coat crew on an internship. i think i took 5 years off my life runnig with those guys. one day, i had to pounce on a loose dog that walked across our hot emulsion..she was yelping in pain. the contractor wrote a check for vet bills and adopted her. she rode in the truck.

after military discharge I climbed telephone poles for Ma Bell. It was late late late like o dark hundred late and I was on a pole, in a snow storm restoring service to a hospital. Right then and there I decided the job wasn't worth 98 bucks a week and decided to go back to school.