Crisis Thread

[1 cheeseweasel @cheeseweasel Participant]

Fuck going to university for the sake of it. The last government had this stupid plan to get as many people into uni as possible and it’s just resulted in loads of people in their twenties with shitload of debt and useless qualifications. And you’ll have to pay about 10x as much per year as I did! Whilst I learned lots of useful engineering theory at uni I can’t say my degree has ever helped me to get work.

But try to be clever about things and keep your options open. At least get your A-levels done.

[6 General Lighting @general-lighting Moderator Staff]

what are you studying in your FE college?

Unfortunately it is near impossible to make a paying career from music (my younger sister is a very talented singer and guitarist but has to do a full time corporate day job in marketing) and even if you do it often involves having to produce something you hate to get paid.

It is however worth getting some sort of year 12/13 education simply to prove that you can count and converse in something approaching English (or any other languages) and also think straight, but TBH unless you have a defined career path and are focused about getting a job after graduation it is pointless going up to University at age 18 – you can still go up at a later time in life anyway!

I dropped out of mine in 1992 as the lecturers didn’t believe there was any future in using computers for multimedia, and still managed to get employment in IT and move up to a management position. Some of my staff have been up to uni and even studied some IT course but I was dismayed to find they had not even been taught any kind of coding/programming (which we could use to automate some boring finance database tasks and use the spare time to do more interesting projects, like the pirate TV/radio station for the old people 😉 )

[1 Deez @deez Member]

@cheeseweasel 521059 wrote:

Fuck going to university for the sake of it. The last government had this stupid plan to get as many people into uni as possible and it’s just resulted in loads of people in their twenties with shitload of debt and useless qualifications. And you’ll have to pay about 10x as much per year as I did! Whilst I learned lots of useful engineering theory at uni I can’t say my degree has ever helped me to get work.

But try to be clever about things and keep your options open. At least get your A-levels done.

Yeah this was my thoughts about it too. They just made exams etc. easier so the stats would be better.. it’s not because people are actually getting smarter.

GL I’m doing Law, History & Politics.. had to redo my GCSE Maths due to my teacher messing some things up so i can only do 3 lol.

Your lecturers were very wrong! That was something I used to enjoy to, me and my friend used to do VFX and things like that, i’m also quite experienced in photoshop etc. but I just don’t even know really..

What sort of coding? I’ve dabbled in Java & visual basic..

I’ve actually done quite a bit and got quite a lot of skills for my age actually..

[1 MC G-Tek @mc-g-tek Member]

@DeezNuts 521049 wrote:

To be honest I really wanna do something musical but the chances of that being enough to support me are slim and with college I don’t have time for it anyway as i’m already about 3 months behind in coursework.
I’m expected to do well in college and go to university and all that crap cause i’m quite intelligent but I don’t even know if thats what I want to do, I don’t want to rack up a massive amount of debt just to possibly fail.

Cheers for the support though dudes, it’s much appreciated and nice to have some older people to talk to about things like this

Sounds very similar to when I was that age man, just because I was smarter than the average bear, everyone expected me to get good grades and go to uni – only problem with that was those weren’t my plans, academia never really appealed to me. I don’t need pieces of paper to tell me what a clever boy I am! It took me ages to finally work out what I wanted to do and it’s the same thing I wanted to do back when I was 16, consequently wasted a lot of years trying to placate other people. Fuck em man, they ain’t gotta live your life!

The irony is, now I’m doing what I want (admittedly with no real financial reward as yet), I’m a lot happier and a lot easier to live with. It’s a bit of a struggle financially, but the bills get paid, I’ve got a roof over my head and food in my stomach. Everything else will come in time man (hopefully, lol).

[1 Deez @deez Member]

@MC G-Tek 521065 wrote:

Sounds very similar to when I was that age man, just because I was smarter than the average bear, everyone expected me to get good grades and go to uni – only problem with that was those weren’t my plans, academia never really appealed to me. I don’t need pieces of paper to tell me what a clever boy I am! It took me ages to finally work out what I wanted to do and it’s the same thing I wanted to do back when I was 16, consequently wasted a lot of years trying to placate other people. Fuck em man, they ain’t gotta live your life!

The irony is, now I’m doing what I want (admittedly with no real financial reward as yet), I’m a lot happier and a lot easier to live with. It’s a bit of a struggle financially, but the bills get paid, I’ve got a roof over my head and food in my stomach. Everything else will come in time man (hopefully, lol).

This is pretty much me, I don’t need the satisfaction of a piece of paper that says i’m capable of achieving an A in some crappy exam. I don’t even think exams are a very good/fair way to measure intelligence as often it’s just remembering set information and chucking it back out again without really engaging your brain.
What is it you do mate? I’m glad to hear, i’d rather be doing what I love and just get by because i’d enjoy life a lot more then if I had a job I hated but loads of money. I’d only waste the money on pointless stuff anyway,

[6 General Lighting @general-lighting Moderator Staff]

@DeezNuts 521064 wrote:

GL I’m doing Law, History & Politics.. had to redo my GCSE Maths due to my teacher messing some things up so i can only do 3 lol.

TBH unless things have wildly changed in 20 years those would most likely only be the ones wanted for an arts course at University (i.e £27 000 debt and still end up working in a fucking call centre or insurance company).

I’ve not worked in a big office for about a decade now (I work for a medium size company out in the sticks in Suffolk) but there must still be junior IT support jobs available in UK for the “dirty work” like desktop support, installs, provision of telephones as that means physically installing equipment and therefore cannot be bangalored. TBH these medium size companies often do need reliable admin and IT staff and I would expect they might even find them hard to come by where you are as many people are chasing slightly bigger salaries in companies based in places like Reading…

[1 The Psyentist @the-psyentist Member]

@DeezNuts 521033 wrote:

I suppose so, but with nothing to aim for I just do fuck all, but I have no idea of what I want to be & what I want so there can be no change..

Its weird because i’m not normally like this, i’m normally sort of like fuck I can change it as i believe attitude to situations is everything, but..

That’s fine you don’t need aims. Start volunteer work or find yourself a job, doesn’t have to be something you think you want a permanent career in. At 16 with no ambitions in life I started volunteer work with disabled children just for something to do. I enjoyed it far more than I expected and found I had a knack for it, especially the more physically challenging such as ADHD and Autism sufferers. I continued this voluntary work for nearly 2 years before applying for a local job working with adults with Autism, this job continued for 6 years. Although I enjoyed the job I never really saw it as a lifelong career despite offers of promotion. I only stuck at it because I had no preference to be elsewhere. Then the company fucked me around so I left. I was pissed at them for a long time (still am to be honest) but now I can see beyond that and realise it was a giant learning curve and the experience has taught me a lot about myself as it helped me mature a lot due to the high responsibility levels. Also I now know a lot about Autism and human psychology in general, this coupled with my own mental health problems has given me a great interest in psychology and mental health. Not an ambition but an interest at least, you never know this could be my future career. Who knows?

Just remember you’re learning all the time, even if you’re not aware of it.

[1 MC G-Tek @mc-g-tek Member]

@DeezNuts 521066 wrote:

What is it you do mate? I’m glad to hear, i’d rather be doing what I love and just get by because i’d enjoy life a lot more then if I had a job I hated but loads of money. I’d only waste the money on pointless stuff anyway,

Just the music thing mate, same as you want to do. I know that it’s highly unlikely these days that you can make a real career out of it, but I’d rather give it a go and find out than live my life full of regrets and ‘what-ifs’. I’ve given myself a few years to go balls-out on it and see what happens. It may be a massive gamble in this day and age, but fuck it, you never know unless you try. Need to stop spending quite so much time on here though, that kinda gets in the way a bit!

Someone recently said to me that although it may not be what they wanted me to do with my life, at least I’m putting in some effort with this – plus when they saw some of the comments people had left on YouTube for me, they were pretty fkin impressed man!

[1 cheeseweasel @cheeseweasel Participant]

I think there is a ‘sense of entitlement’ that is bred into people nowadays by our on-demand culture. People expect to get the job/girl/boy/car/house straight away without putting in the leg-work and get disheartened and depressed when they realise things aren’t that easy. I know I felt like that when I was at university – I thought I’d graduate and go get some high-flying engineering job in a recording studio! Sadly that never happened and I soon had to face the fact that even with my shiny degree I’d have to work my way up from the bottom. It’s only in the last two years that I’ve really started making enough money to live on through sound engineering work and it will be a good few years before I can even think about paying off my student debt or saving for a house.

If you got a low-level IT job such as the ones GL suggests, you’d probably find that by the time you’re 21 you’ll be doing a more interesting and higher paid job than the ones who turned their nose up at it when they were 18 and went to uni instead.

[1 Deez @deez Member]

@MC G-Tek 521076 wrote:

Just the music thing mate, same as you want to do. I know that it’s highly unlikely these days that you can make a real career out of it, but I’d rather give it a go and find out than live my life full of regrets and ‘what-ifs’. I’ve given myself a few years to go balls-out on it and see what happens. It may be a massive gamble in this day and age, but fuck it, you never know unless you try. Need to stop spending quite so much time on here though, that kinda gets in the way a bit!

Wise indeed mate – your good at what you do though if the rest of your stuff is as good as your mandy song and the rest of your stuff on youtube.

Hmm as someone who’s good at IT I may try something like that even if its just for a few years to get money before I decide to go to uni or take the next step or whatever. Thanks for the suggestions/advice everyone, more is welcome.

I think i’m gonna start taking more risks with my life rather then wondering what if, that aint the life I want to live.

[1 The Psyentist @the-psyentist Member]

I’m fucking soo high right now!

[1 Deez @deez Member]

@The Psyentist 521091 wrote:

I’m fucking soo high right now!

:laugh_at:

[1 MC G-Tek @mc-g-tek Member]

@DeezNuts 521088 wrote:

Wise indeed mate – your good at what you do though if the rest of your stuff is as good as your mandy song and the rest of your stuff on youtube.

Hmm as someone who’s good at IT I may try something like that even if its just for a few years to get money before I decide to go to uni or take the next step or whatever. Thanks for the suggestions/advice everyone, more is welcome.

I think i’m gonna start taking more risks with my life rather then wondering what if, that aint the life I want to live.

Cheers mate, very kind of you to say so man.

Reckon the advice from GL and Cheeseweasel ain’t gonna see you wrong either dude, they’re both clever fellas and you’ve obviously got interests in their fields of expertise. Do what you enjoy bud, all the best.

[1 Deez @deez Member]

@MC G-Tek 521101 wrote:

Cheers mate, very kind of you to say so man.

Reckon the advice from GL and Cheeseweasel ain’t gonna see you wrong either dude, they’re both clever fellas and you’ve obviously got interests in their fields of expertise. Do what you enjoy bud, all the best.

Just the truth pal, i’m sure many others would agree too. Make sure you keep me updated with any new material you make.

Yeah man, It’s definitely an option i’m consiering at this stage once i’ve finished college..

[1 MC G-Tek @mc-g-tek Member]

@DeezNuts 521104 wrote:

Just the truth pal, i’m sure many others would agree too. Make sure you keep me updated with any new material you make.

Yeah man, It’s definitely an option i’m consiering at this stage once i’ve finished college..

Cool, definitely will do dude. Got a couple of new ones written recently, just need to get em recorded now – will be sure to let you know when they’re done bud.

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