Isn’t it ridiculous and unfair that we have to make the most important choices in our lives while still too young to know what we are doing? After I graduated high school I was presented with some big choices about my future, and I had neither the perspective nor the wisdom to know which one was right.
I listened to advice from my elders, but that didn’t help much.
Old people tell young people to do the things they wished they had done, and it’s not a basis for making your own life decisions. Instead of choosing college, I chose the HVAC program in the local trade school, because it felt like the smart decision at the time. Almost twenty years later I am here to confirm that it was the right choice, and I am very happy with my life as an HVAC tech. Several of my old classmates went to college, to varying degrees of success, but all of them came away with a pile of student loan debt. I did not, because the cost of the HVAC certification program at trade school was a fraction of the cost of college tuition. I was also able to secure a part time job with an HVAC contractor, which gave me valuable field experience and helped offset the cost of my schooling. When I got my HVAC certification, I had zero dollars in student loan debt! That got my HVAC career started on the right foot, and I was able to secure a full time cooling tech position almost immediately