After almost being done with one year of college, I've come to the philosophical conclusion that I'm not really having much fun and I don't want to be billing 3000 hours a year at a law firm and never "enjoy" any of that money.

I'm contemplating dropping out of college, taking business, communication, French and culinary courses, saving money, going to France to learn a few tricks of the trade and take courses from the top notch decorators and then start my own business after my long run of learning.

I'm feeling stressed to always be doing so well just to keep doing well to get to a better position and keep doing well in a never-ending cycle of materialistic goals.

Please advise me against this or for it. I really can be persuaded so easily right now but am so lost as to what would be the best for me.

Hi Nick, so nice to see you post.

âWhat we really want to do is what we are really meant to do. When we do what we are meant to do, money comes to us, doors open for us, we feel useful, and the work we do feels like play to us.â

âEach of us has an inner dream that we can unfold if we will just have the courage to admit what it is. And the faith to trust our own admission. The admitting is often very difficult.â

Julia Cameron

HTH

The thing is I also find myself one period of time wanting one thing and another period of time wanting another thing. One thing I know for sure is I want flexibility and though both CAN and CANNOT provide that, I feel I can't really decide what is ultimately the right decision in not only monetary but social, familial and just overall happiness terms.

I don't know what your family situation is...whether you're married/in a relationship/kids etc., but if you have no family commitments right now - GO FOR IT!!! If I could go back to my days of being single I would have done so many things that I now don't have the opportunity to do with a husband and 2 kids. Hindsight is 20/20 I suppose but you should follow your dreams now while you can!!!

I'm definitely single and without kids (I hope? No I'm just kidding! ). I'm a teenager so those things aren't issues and I think I'm business-oriented but of course what do I know?

go for it you will never know unless you try and good luck

Wow, you sound like me 2 years ago! I went to college and lasted 2 terms before I dropped out and went to culinary school. After I finished culinary school I was back at the UO within 4 months. I don't know what it was but I felt like my education wasn't quite complete and that i needed that college degree to be taken seriously as a business person. I know what you're going though, I am younger too, only 21, and I am still torn with my past choices. If i could go back and do it again, I would have stayed in school while pursuing cake decorating on the side. Hope this helps!

The only thing is I don't like to be juggling things. . .it's either this or that; I don't know if it should be that or not but I guess I'm kind of like that. I either want to excel in school and focus my energies on it, or dedicate myself to something else, you know what I mean?

After being viewed 100+ times I'd hope I could have gotten a little more feedback.

Don't know if this will help or not, but my DH went to Law School and worked as an attorney for a few years before he realized how much of it is just so much bull -loney, if you know what I mean.

He switched tracks and is now in the insurance industry. But having that degree really helped him. It seems a law degree tends to come in quite handy and those that have one seem to be taken somewhat more seriously.

Hey, if you need another 'example' to ponder, look at Warren Brown. Like I said, I don't know if this is helpful, but try to do what makes you happy. Once I was dating my hubby for a few years I knew we'd be getting married and having a family, so I decided not to go back to college. It turned out to be the right decision for me as I'm a SAHM for 11 years now. Predicting my own future plans worked for me - hope it works for you, too!

I think it is kinda hard to give you advise. I mean I have always known what I wanted to do. I worked hard as a single parent to get my degree and licence. But now I love cake decorating and would love to open my own shop. I know that I can't make 25.00 plus an hour doing that. I need that kind of income to make ends meet, esp since I have a larger family and only my income. I think I can do one and still have my interest in something else learning without giving up the other. But maybe you are the type of person puts all your energy in one thing. Maybe you just are not at a point in life to commit to one direction. Of course most of us would love to go to Europe and learn from some of the greats, not feasible for most of us. If you can afford to take this time off your current path for a year or so and try something else out, it may be a good idea to help you really decide. Your credits at college will still be good, and you always have the option to go back to finishing your degree. Or if you can learn from others locally and do school and continue to learn on the side, then that is also an option. You just have to look into what is the most feasible option, and how much of it is just not wanting to commit to one path at this time in life. Hope this is some foood for thought.

If you have the means, then you should DO IT! You can always go back to school should you so decide, but you may not always have the option of going to France. And really, going to France sounds like it would be a wonderful experience. It's ultimately up to you, though. Just ask yourself where you want to be in a few years, and what is going to make you happiest.

amia1024 and sltoklahoma thanks a lot for your advice. It definitely gave a new perspective and you both are right-- the credits will still be there, there is no lack of advancement besides maybe a year or two (and I'm already ahead two years) and really it would still provide a valuable experience.

As long as you can honestly say that each decision you make (in your quest to advance you culinary education) is moving you one step closer to realizing your dream, go for it.

Assorted inspirational quotes:

I never did a day's work in my life. It was all fun.
Thomas Edison

If your success is not on your own terms, if it looks good to the world but does not feel good in your heart, it is not success at all.
Anna Quindlen

What's money? A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do.
Bob Dylan

I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure--which is: Try to please everybody.
Herbert Bayard Swope

I'd rather be a failure at something I love than a success at something I hate.
George Burns

We seem to gain wisdom more readily through our failures than through our successes. We always think of failure as the antithesis of success, but it isn't. Success often lies just the other side of failure.
Leo F. Buscaglia

HTH

I love George Burns! Glad to see his quote there, Jan.

But couldn't you find something of "real" value.........like say from Yogi Bera. lol (Sorry, I couldn't resist). Just wondering how you find these quotes so fast.

You've got to be very careful if you don't know where you're going, because you might not get there.
Yogi Berra

The price of success is hard work, dedication to the job at hand, and the determination that whether we win or lose, we have applied the best of ourselves to the task.
Vince Lombardi

I was told over and over again that I would never be successful, that I was not going to be competitive and the technique was simply not going to work. All I could do was shrug and say 'We'll just have to see'.
Dick Fosbury won an Olympic gold medal at the 1968 Mexico City Games after he invented a revolutionary high-jump technique.

If you don't make a total commitment to whatever you're doing, then you start looking to bail out the first time the boat starts leaking. It's tough enough getting that boat to shore with everybody rowing, let alone when a guy stands up and starts putting his jacket on.
Lou Holtz, College football coach College football coach

The more I practice, the luckier I get.
Jerry Barber, about golf

You have to be able to center yourself, to let all of your emotions go. Don't ever forget that you play with your soul as well as your body.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.
Michael Jordan

For me, winning isn't something that happens suddenly on the field when the whistle blows and the crowds roar. Winning is something that builds physically and mentally every day that you train and every night that you dream.
Emmitt Smith, American Football Player

These are my new shoes. They're good shoes. They won't make you rich like me, they won't make you rebound like me, they definitely won't make you handsome like me. They'll only make you have shoes like me. That's it.
From a Charles Barkley commercial for basketball shoes, 1993

Grace, I owe my success to three search engines and being a relatively fast typist.

It sounds like you could be burned out/overloaded on school considering that you're two years ahead, plus it's probably exam time. Maybe a break would give you some perspective on what you really want. You could always start small and just take one of the courses you are contemplating. If you like it, take the big plunge. If your only obligation is to yourself, by all means start now. No regrets!

my 2 cents is stick with school... education will always be something you have with you. I just finished my MBA and I stay home with my 2 kiddos and run my little bakeshop out back.. It has been a long 5 years with kids, a bakery, undergrad and grad school and a marriage but it will be worth it someday. My advice is to stay in school. If you don't want to go to law school don't, but finish your 4 year degree, you won't regret it!

As a teenager, I detested school, I really did. I almost took a year off after high school, but my mom signed me up for college, and told me 3 days in advance to pack up, she was sending me to school! Well, I hated that for a while too, but managed to finish. Now, as a mother of 3 kids, and a wife, and as someone who has never been for lack of a job ( Thank God!), I can say that, realisticly, it was a good decision to just do it and get it over with! If you've got 2 years in already, you've got a good start. You could plug away, get it done, and still be younger than most, young enough to really enjoy yourself, knowing that you've got that degree to fall back on! (Sorry it's long winded)

This is the quote I used in my final yearbook:
I am glad I did it, partly because it was well worth it, but chiefly because I will never have to do it again!! - Mark Twain

My son loves to cook and is a cook at a good restaurant so he thought he would go into that. Sometimes what you think is enjoyable becomes not so enjoyable when you have to do it all the time. He is going to university for buisness and taking cooking on the side. I didn't go to university and stayed at home looking after my kids for 12 years, I have wonderful kids but now having a hard time finding work. I went back to school to get 4 diplomas and still no job. You need to decide what you want to do and enjoy doing. At this time of your life you need to figure out where you want to go and then figure out how to get there. I regret not getting my education when I was younger. I really suggest you get some counselling from the school to figure out what you want to do. If you really want to go to Europe and can afford to do so I would suggest you take a year off and go and do it. You may regret not doing so later in life. Think long and hard of what you want to do and then don't look back go for it. Good Luck with all that you do.

Lemme tell ya, starting and running your own business takes a LOT of hours! Do like I tell my 9yo... be a MIDDLE MAN! Thats where the $$ is

(but doing your own thing can be very rewarding too)

Jan, at least I know where I'm going wrong now. It's my penchant for loyalty: I only use one search engine. I'm a Google Girl.

(plus the fact that my two and a half year old has taken to climbing into my lap while I'm at the computer, so there goes my typing speed!)

It sounds like you really need to do some soul searching and do what your heart tells you. If you are going to do that now would be the time befor you have to many commitments. That would make it almost impossible then. Good luck with your decision.

As you're only just now completing your very first year of college, I wouldn't put so much pressure on yourself regarding picking out what you want to do for the rest of your life! I myself went into college to be a chemist, after my first year I switched to business, only to switch back to chemistry the next semester. You have tons of time to decide what to do!

In fact, I highly recommend not taking any classes for a year and just doing odd-and-end jobs to decide what you really like. After a year, if you decide you want to go back to college, no harm done. If you decide cakes are for you, then you can go to culinary.

Another thing to remember: The norm is becoming for colleges to encourage students to take a year off before entering college, even prestigious Ivy Leauge schools. It's to encourage maturity and allow students the opportunity to experience life to decide ultimately what they WANT to do.

So I loved school. I'm a very much self-admitted nerd. I've both freak and geek (woo-hoo Judd Apatow!). Anyway, straight out of HS went to a very well-respected local university, got my BA in Communication and Spanish with a minor in Journalism in 2003, got a job at a well-respected magazine, switched to a national-wide trade mag, got laid off and now am an office manage also in charge of our advertising and marketing.

Point of the story? Dude, I LOVED college - I wouldn't change it for the life of me. Now, yes, I do cakes on the side. The ultimate goal to combine the two passions - those marketing and PR classes are VERY helpful in promoting my business! I still very much love the communication/journalism field, but have realized in the past two years that I am more of an artist/creative spirit than I realized. It took me a while to figure this next part out, even though I'm young w/no real major responsibilies I still want to layout a good foundation for the future - and for me that was/is a good education with a solid background.

(YEs, I know I'm not representing the journalistic community very well with my sentence structures, but I don't feel like it right now

Dont know if i can help or not But here goes,. I got married at a very early age, had my baby, didnt finish high school, , Stayed home raised my baby until she was 12 by that time i wanted to do something with my life, Cause i felt i had missed out on a lot of things, So off to Adult education classes Got my GED in 86 Graduated from Business School and have had the same boring job since, Now im wanting to do cakes and be a wedding director , Your young go for it .The least that can happen is you wont like it God knew we would mess up that why we have second chances Dont stay in something that you feel you have to ,( to old to get anything better). Stay because you love it Do i feel i could have done anything diff i dont know never had the chance to find out , At least Duff seems to have a good time??

I'd say that college is never a bad decision, and you will learn things there you will never learn anywhere else.

.....that being said, I went to college for 4 years to become a speech pathologist, and guess what? I hated it! I practiced for 1 year and quit. I always wanted to go to culinary school while I was in high school, but my parents (who never went to college) were going to make sure I got a traditional 4-year college experience. I didn't even know what I wanted to study, and since my college had a big speech pathology department I opted for that.

Now guess what I'm doing? I'm a cake designer at a bakery in my hometown and I ABSOLUTELY LOVE MY JOB! I'm basically self-taught, and continue to learn through other decorators, seminars, conventions, etc. (and also so much from this website--it's been so beneficial!).

So, what I say is follow you gut and do what excites you. Do it with a plan, though. A degree is a great thing to have, especially if you want to run your own business.

Good luck....and go for it!!!!

I'm going to vote with SugarBakerz and say stay in school. You will not regret having an education. Also, a university degree gives you more of a world view besides making you more generally employable. Going to France is a great idea, but assuming that you'll get a stage with the best in the pastry world may not be exactly realistic. As everyone says, you can go back to school later, but how many really do? Life gets in the way. It is really much harder to go back to school once you've got a job and spouse and family. School first, Europe next.