I need to make some serious changes in my life, I need advice

ILoveYourVibes · 08-12-2020 06:04AM

Hi OP.

You might not like what I am going to say but i will try and put it as nicely as i can.

Firstly i want to say ..you sound like a highly intelligent sensitive young person. I assume a young male.

Now.

The truth is you are not always going to like what you do. And the most important thing is really to develop the mental callous to get through tough bits.

My advice to you ..is get up and do something ANYTHING. Stop thinking about it and just do something.

I think I just need to pick something, stick at it, graft and shut up.

Bingo ..i agree 100%.

But don't think that money and future isn't important. It is. And don't think that the amount of money you do or don't earn won't impact your enjoyment of your job long term it will.

I know many people who enjoy a thing only to find after 5 yrs of doing it for pittance ...they hate it. And vice verse ..a lot of people who hate doing something ...only to love it after 5 yrs because well...they love getting paid.

Ambition and a future in something ...often helps you enjoy it.

SOmeone said something about a degree etc. Ok so maybe that was a broad thing to say.

But you DO need a plan that is more detailed than ..get a trade.

Where do you want to be in that trade within 5 yrs? what are your goals? what do you want to be earning in 5 0 10 yrs etc? Do you want a house a mortgage?

What goals do you want within your craft do you want to set up your own business? Do you need other skills for that ...business skills etc? do you need contacts etc?

Start building up your life. Dream big!

'Stick to it ' is an important skill in itself. Partic when you don't like what you are doing.

Good luck.

Danonino. · 08-12-2020 06:35AM

LineConsole wrote: »

... snip...

Knuckle down and finish the degree. Even if you hate some modules (who doesn’t!?). Then do an apprenticeship if you still want. If you don’t finish the degree I guarantee you’ll regret it later in life... Snip ...

This.

shesty · 08-12-2020 10:36AM

MrMiata wrote: »

That's why I want to get a trade, at least if things go south I'd have a fall back.

Why did the Comer Brothers become so successful, how many young lads from Glenamaddy went out plastering but they're the multi millionaires.
I know a guy who started around the same time as them, but they run one of the largest property development companies in Europe and he keeps busy.

That's where my interest lie.

Right. You want to become a builder and through that you think it's a route to becoming a millionaire. I am speaking from the degree-educated side of construction here - I am a civil engineer.

Firstly, having something to fall back on if things go south - I was on site in 2009/2010/2011, watching the world fall apart around me because construction got hit first, hardest and longest. I cannot tell you how many tradesmen and foremen(and foremen tend to be carpenters originally)said to me in those years "You'll be ok, you have your education", or "you can go to the Middle East or Australia and get a job no problem with your degree". I also cannot tell you how many of them went back to education in 2011/2012 because they had no other choices - those who had families here and couldn't emigrate, those who worked in England or Europe or Dubai or Oz for weeks or months on end, flying home at weekends or every few months - this starry-eyed idea that it was all grand because they had a trade was really sweat and tears and heartbreaking decisions for many of them.

If you want to become a tradesman that's fine, go do it. But be aware that it is years of 6am starts, working til late at night to meet deadlines fairly regularly, it's dirty and dusty and usually cold, it's arguing with other trades, and if you are in your own business, it morphs into managing the workflow, chasing people for money, trying to manage staff coming and going and trying to drum up business (SALES!!!). Carpenters (in my humble opinion) are great tradesmen, they are skilled and love what they do. But it is a hard, physical job and it does take it's toll. You are not sounding like if you would stick it, truth be told. And people in construction just know who will stick it out, and who won't, who will be decent and who won't - it is pretty obvious from early on.

You have an opportunity for an education, if I were you I would close my mouth, grab it with both hands, set your eye on the finish line of getting the degree and THEN the world is really your oyster. People start to lose patience listening to navel gazing after a certain point, nobody is put on this earth to support you forever. For every Comer brother or McKillen or the rest out there, there are thousands of men who are just keeping their job going and ticking over on a normal wage. Those property developers fought their way to those positions - they didn't get there by being nice to people - and I wouldn't necessarily say they made all the smartest decisions along the way, many of them lost as much as they won.

But I bet they all tell their kids to get an education first and foremost.

Ikozma · 08-12-2020 10:41AM

Drewgerger wrote: »

Life will be very tough for you if you don't have a degree you will be moving from job to job and be unemployed alot

Absolute horse****
If I were you I'd go with your uncle, working with people you like and working at something you enjoy is what it's all about, a degree won't guarantee you that

tea and coffee · 09-12-2020 09:37AM

I'm with the others- you should finish your degree. If you want to go on and do carpentry after that, then do.
What's stopping you being entrepreneurial now? You could set up a small business while you're in college, test a few ideas....
I assume your lectures are online giving you even more time to try it.

I have a friend who's brother is like what you're describing. He's in his 40s now and still living at home with some pipe dream of "doing something ". He must have started and quit at least a dozen courses and trades by now. Sometimes he would get to his final year and drop out- maybe he couldn't stand the pressure of not getting it anything less than perfect. This sounds a bit like what you're describing- a 2.1 isnt good enough for you?! What's wrong with that grade?

I absolutely hated my degree, I ended up repeating a year as I had failed my exams. There were a few modules I liked but the rest-nah. I went into a job I didn't like but the prospects were good and I stuck it out and manoeuvred myself to somewhere in the organisation where I was more content. Even my Masters which I loved had boring and hard modules.
Nothing is interesting all the time. Yes I know you hate you're course, but you've "wasted" (as you put it) 2.5 years on it already. If you quit now you are starting from scratch and have nothing at all to show for all that hard work. If you finish it, at least you have the degree. Plus- hey- you've stuck with it this far so clearly you do have some sticking power.
You're young- 18 months is nothing in the scheme of things when you have 35 odd years of work ahead of you.
You need planning and organisation, grit and determination- prove to yourself that you have it by sticking with something, anything.
Everyone wants to be the success story but you need to get there first. It's not a fluke.

purpleshoe · 11-12-2020 09:45AM

I can understand the frustration but you need to be mindful that the grass is not always greener. Challenges, unknowns and disappointments in life never go away. They pop up ever so often.

You need a win, see the course out. Fortunately half the battle is just turning up.

By completing the course you will have a track record of applying yourself and seeing something out. You will be taken more seriously because of this.

Don't become that 30 year old person who has nothing to show for the themselves despite the several opportunities in their twenties.

LilacNails · 11-12-2020 10:02AM

^^^^^

Op that's the best advice. Please stick to your course,. The grass is always greener where u water it.

mclovin442 · 12-12-2020 05:23PM

Fair play for seeking advice OP, it can be extremely difficult and draining trying to figure out what path to take in life. There's lots of good and some questionable advice above; in reality you probably just need to write down where you want to be in 10 years and plot a path from there.

When you do make the decision, go forward with a mantra of no regrets. If you stay in the college course, then smash the exams, live in the library, no excuses, just get it done. If you go for the trade, do so with the aim of becoming the best at what you do. Learn as much as you can as quick as you can. Don't worry about starting your own business until you have the skills and knowledge to make a proper go at it.

I can see some similarities between us, loving hands on jobs, not loving the business course and only really enjoying the beer and women in college. I changed course after hating my first one, saddled myself with a huge loan to pay off the fees of the second course and then realised that I didn't really enjoy that one either. I decided to finish it out, despite not really liking it and now, ten years later I'm very glad I pushed through. I got the opportunity to work with some amazing companies, was moderately successful in climbing the ladder quickly and got to see some amazing countries travelling for work.

After 8 years of that I moved to Australia and am currently working as in a casual role as a glazier to change things up for a while and I love it. There have been many people here posting solid advice, but it is all advice that comes from their learnings and experiences, it doesn't necessarily mean it will be right for you.

From reading your replies, it appears you're very hard on yourself. Sure you've chopped and changed but you have the awareness to know the problem and now you're seeking to fix it. There are plenty of others who went to college, dropped out and then were happy to sit at home, collecting dole payments since. So work on being more positive with yourself, you can do any job in the world but if you aren't happy in yourself you won't enjoy whatever profession you're in.

Whatever you decided I wish you all the best. And one last thing, people say life is short, it's not; choosing a path now does not mean you're stuck on it forever.

Rubberchikken · 12-12-2020 10:28PM

It's all well and good to seek advice and to give thought to what you want to do but there's also navel gazing and constant changing is the solution.

At some stage you have to make an actual decision.

Stick with the course. See it finished. Then decide what you want to do.
Chopping and changing now could lead to a life of indecision and nothing achieved.

qwerty13 · 13-12-2020 03:32AM

What Rubberchicken said.

You’ve mentioned a quite comfortable upbringing. If you didn’t have that, and you had to maximise every opportunity given, with zero chance for a ‘do-over’, what would you do?

Even if your parents are very comfortably off, I can’t see them being supportive of you dropping in and out of courses and trades for a lengthy period of time. There’s going to come a time where your choice is going to be influenced by (or dictated by) what you can wholly fund yourself. I suspect that time is coming, so I’d suggest maximising what you can get out of your parents support, ie finishing your degree. This may buy you time to look into other opportunities that they might decide to support for a limited time, but I suspect that if you bail out again, their indulgence of you may wear thin.

LimeFruitGum · 13-12-2020 09:22PM

I'm not sure you'd even like entrepreneurship, OP, based on what you've said so far.

Entrepreneurs are supposed to be risk-takers and relish challenges. If you're scared off by a class module, how are you going to handle complex business decisions & challenges in the real world?

What happens if you've got a customer roaring at you down the phone? How are you going to hustle up those orders if you don't like sales? Ensuring that there are no supply chain delays, or process bottlenecks? What about managing people, a product line, or vendors? It is long hours, lots of paperwork, reviews, approvals, calls, and late-nights. I remember I had to do a bit of everything until I got to a point where I could afford to outsource stuff I hated, like accounting.

There is a long, loooooong path between starting the business/doing the work and getting a nice profile in the Sunday Business Post or wherever.
People forget about the nice articles soon enough. I can tell you that because I've been interviewed a couple of times in magazines and blogs from my former industry, and I hope to make a similar mark in my current one. If someone wants to talk to me about my work, grand, but I don't seek it out and I still have to do my day job.

I don't see you talking about researching market gaps, honing a skill etc; just about being a famous businessperson, and that you like making things. If you have an eye for detail, maybe you're better off pursuing a more analytical line of work: QA, auditing, I don't know. You don't have to be an entrepreneur when you leave college, you can always come back to it, or try it on the side at a small scale.

No matter what, you do need to finish your degree.

Stick a picture on the wall of your Business Name or the Comer brothers as you study, to motivate you. Research your ideal roles (or whatever) in Monster. Look at people doing those jobs on LinkedIn. What do those people have in common, can you map the course to that job, or see a common thread in that person's employment history that led them to that job?
I bet most of them have 3rd level or some other kind of professional qualification.

Covid is on, you're at home anyway, suck it up and study. Pull up your grades. You're already on your 2nd/3rd chance at education. You can't realistically ask your parents to fund another ill-researched idea.

I've done lots of modules in which I had zero practical interest or aptitude (a French legal module comes to mind, yuck), but I had to complete them as part of the course. As much as I disliked doing it, but I didn't want to screw up my grade average by sulking about how stupid this module is (oh wait til you start working - we all have had to do work tasks that we don't enjoy).
Or else I'd do what I can to bank an A in my stronger subjects if I realised I wasn't going to get top marks in a less-preferred subject.

What's the worst that will happen if I apply myself - that I will learn something? It winds me up to see someone complain that this is too hard after one or two classes. It isn't going to get any better if you skip the rest of the semester! You'll come up against this kind of thing all the time in business, and you can't run away from that. I too found the career advisors at my university to be completely useless, but is there a lecturer you can talk to?

I get it, but I really want to shake some real-life sense into you at the same time. :-/

Piriz · 13-12-2020 10:19PM

hi OP,
I've read through three pages of replies and am fed up reading this topic so I wont read any more but heres my reply.

I have had similar experiences to you.. I've done both trade and college, I've had positive and negative experiences in each, I've been unemployed, I've had aspirations to have my own business and have pursued a few ideas in the past. I also love carpentry.

what stands out most is your interest in entrepreneurship. owning your own business is appealing..what underpins this entrepreneurship is knowledge, skills and strong work ethic.

I dont doubt you have a strong work ethic especially in the right field.you also have capacity to develop skills, you have some knowledge.. you have some raw ingredients for entrepreneurship..

you have stated that you are done with college..
are you done with education? a business degree is an excellent form of education for entrepreneurship.

what is also important for entrepreneurship is credibility.. you can get credibility with good credentials. with a business degree all you need next is a good idea then you can begin to realise the entrepreneurial journey.

you are choosing to begin a trade.. I like trades so I dont have any problems there but how does it fit with your entrepreneurial aspirations? to complete a registered apprenticeship takes 4 years on paper but can be up to six in practice.. getting through the phases can be slow. this could mean it takes you 5or 6 years to get the credentials (+credibility)

and you still might not have a business idea and you are now pidgon holed into the construction sector and have no clout or knowledge in other areas where market opportunities exist..

entrepreneurship is best understood from the side of business not from the side of hand tools. you want to capitalise on opportunities you should reconsider your opinions on what education you are getting in college.

all the best..

LegacyUser · 13-12-2020 11:28PM

You sound like me in my early 20s. Pushed to to college because its the done thing, no interest in it and hated studying and doing projects. I did 3 different courses and dropped out of all of them. I was clueless as to what to do with my life.

I eventually went back to college for 4th time to study culinary arts at 30. I drove an hour every day to college and lived on peanuts for 2 years. I graduated and a few years later I bought my own house. I think it takes some people their whole 20's to get their **** together.

I wish I had taken up a trade after school. College definitely isn't for everyone and I say give the carpentry a go but give it a good shot.

I need to make some serious changes in my life, I need advice

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