sammy sung :
I've recently comes to the realization that I actually want to do something I'll enjoy for the rest of my life, as a career, rather than do things I always thought I'd just have to do.
Maybe I am a little jaded (okay, quite cynical and very jaded) but you typically have to do something you tolerate for the rest of your life unless you get very lucky and happen to find that one perfect job. I know as I have been in your shoes not too long ago and got severely b**chslapped upside the head by reality. My current job is essentially a mix of customer relations, clerical work, and regulatory compliance bullcrap despite my degrees being in "hard science" fields. It's really fun for a trained engineer who knows how to program having to deal with a federally-mandated computer program that I have every inclination was generated from doing the Windows equivalent of piping /dev/urandom to /usr/bin/gcc. (The program runs on Windows and anybody smart enough to be able to use *nix wouldn't make such horrid software.) Can I so much as add a printer to my computer? Nope, file a ticket and it will be done...this year...maybe. Or you'll get disciplined if you do it yourself. It's also fun for a trained scientist to have federal bureaucrat lawyers who can't even spell "bureaucrat" without having a 20-year-old staffer look it up try to tell me what the state of the art in this field of science is. (I'll give you an idea- the computer equivalent would be them saying that a Pentium 4 Prescott would be state of the art as it runs at about the same clock speed as an 8-core AMD Piledriver FX, Steamroller A10, Intel Haswell i7 because MHz is still THE performance metric. Cores are the part you don't eat in an apple, duh.) Try to do what you know what you really need to do based on your knowledge of the field gets you fired, fined, and/or thrown in prison. However that job lets me keep a decent roof over my head and allows me to have some hobbies I do actually enjoy in my free time. I'd be worse than bankrupt if I tried to go into business mucking with computers. I'd be in the EBT line at Wally-World if I did my woodworking hobby or messed around with cars and equipment as a day job instead of working for suits and lawyers in one of the largest sector of the economy (healthcare.)
I spoke with someone that owns a PC Repair shop in a University town where I live. He's agreed to take me on as an intern for the Fall to Spring semesters of 2015. He's told me that he's taken on people straight out of various technical schools, that also have their A+ certs etc. And he laughed and made them sound pathetic, cause lots of them couldn't even assemble a tower. He pretty much suggested that the best thing to have is simply experience in his line of work, to which I already have to some degree. He claimed that lots of people both employee and interns have knowledge and skills in various things. His particular end is hardware and building/repairing towers etc
I didn't get to ask him this, but I thought you'd all know best. Aside from my certs, what would I best try to get an associates in? What skills/degree would be applicable to working/running a PC Repair shop? I've been considering Computer Networking, but I'm having second thoughts. This would be for fall 2015, the same time I'd be planning to intern at his shop.
The best thing to have if you want to run a PC repair shop is to marry into a buttload of money so you can subsidize the significant losses you'll see in such a business operation. Don't let her get you to sign a prenup so that you still get something when she divorces you. About the only way to make any money is to deal with people with much more money than brains and who have notoriously unreliable hardware- that is, run an Apple repair shop. But any area with any market for that is already going to have at least one so you still will be likely eating ramen.
Also, how much is he paying you for the internship? I have a hunch it's either "experience" (as in he's getting free labor from you) or about minimum wage. Like I said, I have been around a while, seen quite a bit, and am
just a little bit jaded.
Best things in my experience to get degrees in are the skilled trades (plumbing, electrical, HVAC) if you don't want to spend a lot of time in school. You come out with a marketable skill with little debt and little time pissed away in training. Another thing would be to become a midlevel (physician assistant or nurse practitioner) if you don't mind goofing off for four years of undergrad and then having 3-4 semesters of fairly cheap and not very difficult midlevel school. You come out with an
extremely marketable degree and a paycheck of $85,000-110,000/year working an 8-5 job 5 days a week where some poor schmuck of an internist/family doc/ER doc with a quarter million dollars in student loan debt who works twice as many hours as you would eats all of your liability from your mistakes. It's a pretty good deal and what I typically recommend to people who think they want to do a "science" field and can actually talk to people. You could also become an actual engineer too but the job prospects aren't as good as they used to be in the pre-outsourcing to India days. Liberal arts and the humanities are pretty much a waste as you might as well just go to work at whatever hourly retail job you'd get with a high school degree versus wasting four years of your life and racking up student loan debt for an utterly useless degree. Law also sucks too, the market is oversaturated and you rack up six figures in debt to have a 50% chance of even getting a job when you're done. It would actually be better to go to med school and rack up a quarter million or more of debt, do 4-8 years of 100+ hour a week work at minimum wage or below (residency) and then be owned by a bunch of suits in the monopoly health system you work for and under the government's microscope when you actually get to start your real job in your mid-30s (assuming you go straight through undergrad, med school, and residency.) Like I said above, minimizing the time spent training and the debt you incur is HUGE.
Any and all suggestions are appreciated. Please no suggestions of different lines of work though please. My heart is set on this.
Part of growing up is having reality whack you upside the head and knock the childish, impossible daydreams out of your head. Look at what I said above, think about skilled service jobs with short training periods and little debt (like skilled trades and physician assistants/nurse practitioners). You can't outsource them so you don't have to worry about your job leaving for the Far East like engineers. You haven't sunk much time and money into the training such that if the market collapses you aren't really burned when you leave to train to do something else as if you sunk a quarter million bucks or more and 11-16 years into your training like doctors and lawyers.
Also, any reads/books that are imperative and or are the authority when it comes to learning all and more needed for A+ and other certs.
Read the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics job outlooks at bls.gov. Look at the demand for various occupations and the projected salaries, taking into account the length and expense of training to get there. That is as good of advice as I can think of. The economy really sucks under Comrade Obama's regulatory regime and the (unspeakable curse words) lawyers and suits perverting the economy/job market and legal/regulatory system to suit themselves at the great expense of everybody else is especially hard on a non-protected class (under 40, male, not gay, not black/American Indian/Hispanic) like most people here are who can't simply sue to get a job. The self-centered, highly narcissistic, entitled, and lazy Baby Boomers have also seriously messed things up as well but I'll discuss them
after you get a job as they'll make your life at work miserable much more so than keep you from getting a job.
Sorry to take a leak on your parade but I thought I should honestly answer your questions. Good luck! You will absolutely need it!
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