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A thought occurred to me the other day as I was walking my dog. Suppose I hadn't gone to college, and had instead learned to be a construction worker. If that were the case, I would have been working steady employment for much longer, I wouldn't have any student loans, and I could spend every day climbing to the top of telephone poles doing neat
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Sorry to hear you have regrets about not doing the college thing. You probably would have enjoyed going to a liberal arts school and getting challenged and learning to write a research paper. (Though I seriously don’t think you needed it - you’re already one of the cleverest and most sophisticated people I know, and while being able to write a research paper is handy, it’s hard to do outside the school setting.) School was fun, and I did learn a lot - my personal issue with it is just that it's EXPENSIVE and takes a long time. And given how many cool things one can do without a degree, I worry that it was wasted on me. That's one of the reasons I would hesitate to try switching careers now - after how much time/money I'm investing, it seems like changing my mind now would be like betraying myself. Though the fact that your friend became an electrician in her 30s is pretty neat. Kind of reminds me of this SMBC comic: http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2722 which also does a pretty good job of illustrating your point about not being stuck in one box.
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The thing about college for me isn't necessarily learning to be clever, it's ... I've never had the chance to find out just how clever I could be. High school was more or less just learning stuff; at the time I thought college was more of the same just with more advanced stuff, so why bother? But getting to know serious college graduates has given me a different picture of it - it's about learning how to deconstruct, analyze, and synthesize, and really use the 'stuff' you've learned. A research paper in and of itself is more or less useless in everyday life, but learning how to find the information you need, examine evidence on both sides of an argument, come to a conclusion (or at least present a theory) using what you've researched, anticipate counterarguments, etc ... that is useful. And yes, I am capable of doing it on my own, but I've never had to do it in any serious way and I'd like to find out what would happen with some real training. Usain Bolt probably always found his morning jog easier than other people did, and it would have been easy just to sit back and say 'yeah, I dunno, jogging just comes easy to me, I guess I'm a natural,' but with serious dedicated training, look what he's done! When I go to the UK and am taking in all sorts of new things every day and having interesting and engaging conversations every night I feel like my brain is finally getting up to a speed I didn't know it had. What if I'd been in that sort of environment for more than a couple weeks at a time?
But yes, college is really expensive, especially in the States, and when you're coming into it as a young person right out of high school and you may not even know what you want out of it, it's easy to let it pass without getting the most out of it.
You wouldn't have to change careers completely, though! Qualify as an electrician in a part-time course, while doing your main thing during the day, and then as you're building up your internship hours and client base, fill in the gaps with electrical work to pay off the student loans. Double-dipping! :)
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