After High School, What to do???

You can go ither rout and be sucessful it dont matter. Its all about how you do it like every body has said on here. They all have different points. If you turn your hobby into your job you will begin to dislike it. You can go to school for 25k+ and eventually pay it back and have fun while you are there or you can go ahead and get some work in at a body shop starting at low pay and work your way up, I live in a mulitary comunity and everybody that i have talk to is basicly retired or still in and they love it. You can take any of thouse routs and make good money and be happy. Just which ever one you choose make the best out of it, have fun. So its your decision... Iv spent many many long hours on this one decision. This is my best conclusion

I wanna go soon for some type of business courses, since those are always good..

Joe - that console is badass, I wanna learn to draw up some cool shit in SolidWorks now lol.

^cris (bdroppeddak) thats an awsome attitude man. I hope you do good in school man.

~I know one thing for sure Smallz... if you want to continue to live in California you better get a damn good education that leads to a high paying job. With the cost of living here being as high as it is you can kiss all the uneducated fuckers goodbye, unless there construction workers (nothing wrong w/ construction either they make good ass money just they eventually burn out after working hard as hell there whole lifes). Also its expensive as fuck to rent shops around here man. Good shops are going out of business all the time around here, because of high rent costs and what not.

College is a great decission, I would stay away from computer related jobs though, alot are being outsourced to other countries already.

keep on going to school man weather it be for trucks or not u'll kick yourself in the ass if u dont...I skipped a semester after grad. highschool and it sucked man life sucks if u dont do something good with it, it takes work to get on top but once u have grad. college and have the degrees noone can take it from u all the hard shits behind u once u have a nice job with no worries of loosing it. Im in college for Law Enforcement now but ill never loose intrest in building rides it's my niche in life now i gotta make a good way of living to support my draggin habits...

try and get a job at a custom shop first. learn what you can before you try and open your own shop that way if you don't like to work on other peoples rides then no harm done. if you open your own shop first then find out you don't like it you have spent money on tools shop space and what ever else for nothing other than your own garage. get into a trade i have 2 friends that work in the electrical trade and 1 guy made 87,000 bucks and the other guy made over a 100 grand doing electrical on gas and oil plant shut downs and fab work. not bad for workin 12 hrs a day for 5 days on 2 off.in the end you have to chose what makes you happy not what other people say you should do.

I will graduate in may as a CNC Machinist. Great job if you like doing hands on things and making stuff. All of the jobs I have looked into for my field, start at $20+ and hour. Sounds good to me

I DIDNT go to school when I graduated high school. I got a job and advanced and ended up making pretty decent money, ~35k. In fact the only problem I had was that there was only ONE JOB that would pay me that much money. If I quit to work somewhere else, I needed to work overtime to make as much at the new job. I had two kids and was working 60hrs a week... I barely saw my family.

So I WENT BACK TO SCHOOL. I worked hard and finished a 5 year electrical engineering program at an accredited university in only 4.5 years, graduating with honors in December. I have had job offers, every single one 15k HIGHER than the job I left, with no overtime. Sure I have student loans to pay back, but thanks to my career choices I CAN pay them back.

But not yet. In my opinion, a bachelors degree today is what a high school diploma was ten years ago. I worked hard as an undergrad and got accepted with advanced standing to the #72 (accredited) business school in the US for a masters in business administration.

Go to college, work very hard. There are graduation statistics printed in the course catalog of your school showing that only about 31% of student who start a degree finish it. You can fuck off and drink and party and quit like 69% of all entering freshmen do. Or you can be in that 31%. Get good grades, the effort you expend now will pay dividends when employers look for YOU. Anything below 3.2 GPA will not get you on the radar. SO that means pass classes even when they are stupid. Even when the instructor is out to get you. Never drop a class, that zero in that column on your transcript will speak VOLUMES about your character. Go to school. Finish school play with trucks as a hobby, because there arent many rich shop owners who dont put in 70 hr weeks working on someone elses projects.

My two pennies, but at least they are pennies with experience in this kind of decision.

Go to college, get a job part time being a bitch at a body shop if you want to. College can help you more than you know even if you don't go to a tech school...If you have good grades and can get scholarships or grants don't turn them down...when your done with college you'll look back on it as a time of your life to remember.

I'd go to school man. I'm in the same situation as you. I'm coming up to graduation in 4 months. I plan on going to the local Junior College for at least two years. I want to take some welding and machining classes, as well as some business and social related classes. I've already taken a few social classes and they're fun. They also put you closer to your AA or whatever it is you're aiming for.

If you love working on trucks I'd keep that as a hobby for now, and do that while going to school. Then once school is over and done, give it a shot. Personally, I have a little experience here. I started a small business building bikes. At first it was fun. Then, get a few shitty customers and it's not so cool. People don't pay, or they're assholes/retards and it kind of burns you out working for them. Now I don't generally want to build bikes for myself anymore. It's like a chore at this point. I have to force myself ot do it. I'm also more involved in my truck project. Now, if all I had to do all day was weld, I'd be set!