HGG Community Forums

Life is about balance. Write out the pros and cons for each and decide for yourself. We can only point you in what we think is the best direction. I would recommend pursuing the Diesel Technology so you always have a way to support yourself if working with horses doesnt pan out or it may allow you to sustain the horse habit.

Same here- Im turning seventeen this January, and I constantly have an internal monologue going on thats about whether i should go to a college, or whether I should get a job and save for my own little farm. Both things mean a lot to me and my family, but Im in the same boat as you- I don't know what to do. But hey. Thats okay :))

My grandma gave me some advice that might also help you make a decision. Go to college and get the credits you need done.. (Math, science, history, lit, etc) and then take a couple years off to find yourself and who you want to be. And, of course schooling is important, but just don't stress TOO much! Know that school isn't everything in life! :P

If/when all y'all do go to college, don't forget to fill out your FAFSA and apply for financial aid! And I don't mean the loan part of that, I mean the grant. Every penny you don't borrow is a penny you don't have to pay back. People who go into thousands of dollars of student loan debt spend years paying it off, and I mean years. My parents were 40 before they paid theirs off. My best friend doesn't owe a cent because her financial aid paid for every class and every book, plus a bit back every year that she was able to put towards things like a down payment on her new(ish) car and a shiny (comfy) new mattress.

In additon, check out your community college first. A lot of bigger colleges pair with community colleges in their area so you can get your associate's at the community college and transfer everything so you only spend two years at the bigger college - and community college credits are way, waaaay cheaper, like a half or third the price.

So, a word on college, which goes against most of the conventional wisdom floating around out there.

College is not the right path for everyone. Yes, a lot of jobs require college degrees that don't really need to, but that's mostly due to how common college degrees are nowadays. But there is absolutely nothing wrong with choosing a vocational school that is both cheaper and shorter and choosing to become an auto mechanic, a carpenter, a plumber, an electrician, an A/C worker, whatever - those jobs are essential to our daily lives, and you can make bank doing them. A friend of mine that struggled and later dropped out of college and has spent the last five years struggling to do office work recently decided to join the carpentry union (he enjoys woodworking) and begin a carpentry apprenticeship. He is way happier, makes about as much as an apprentice carpenter that he was making in his 9-5 office job, and gets physical activity that channels his ADD much better than fidgeting at an office desk. His only regret is taking so long to decide to do so. I truly think we do students a disservice by emphasizing college for everyone, directly after high school.

My advice would be to only go to college if you know you want to go to college. Not because it's what your parents want, because it's a place for you to figure out what you want to do, because you're afraid/nervous/anxious about life after 18 years of schooling. It's gotten too expensive to be the place to do your figuring out things. If you think you want to work in the horse world, now is the time to figure that out. You will be more more able to be a working student or a barn manager/supervisor for a year between high school and college than you will in the year after college when all your loans are coming due.

Keep in mind that any career in horses requires many years of "paying dues" and years of hard labor for little pay before you comfortably own your own lesson barn/breeding facility/training barn/whatever. Most of the instructors that I have taken lessons from (in twenty years, through four different states) needed a job when they were first starting out and squeezed in barn life around it until horses could be their sole source of income. So going to school for diesel tech would not preclude a horse career - it could either fund your early years, or it could be the skill that allows you to get a job on a farm/ranch/whatever that has a bunch of cranky old tractors. On the counter point, the brilliant instructor I took lessons from for six year in New Jersey was ultimately unable to get her own barn. She still rides and teaches lessons on the side, but went back to school at age 40 to become a lab tech. So you can always go to school/get certifications later. You're not locked into a path because you chose it at 18.

Personal Story Time: I knew, via my temperament (can't deal with stupid), my horse skills (good horsemanship, eh rider), my mental state (gets very anxious when things don't got according to plan), and my work experience (college jobs) that I was not cut out for a horse career. I love horses, and I loved getting paid to work with them, but I have family in six different states that I like to visit, and horses, in most cases, are a 365 day a year job, unless you have a great business partner. So I went the college and office job route and use that to pay for lessons, clinics, leases, etc. On the beautiful days I miss working at a barn. On the hot humid days, I'm glad I have a job with AC. But I also figured out my game plan before I went to college, knew what I wanted to major in, what I wanted to work in, and was extremely fortunate that my scholarships and my parents covered over 90% of my tuition and board. That plan did not work out as well for some of my friends that had to take major loans and didn't know what they wanted to do and so only had limited work experience coming out of college.

Tl;dr - It's okay to not know what you want to do. Your decision now doesn't have to be your decision in ten years. But if you're not 100% sure about college, work for a year or two, rather than paying money to figure it out at college.

Trade school or apprenticeship is also a good option which being a mechanic would fall under. I grew up in a rural area and we had a tech center for our students that were interested in the trades. Do you have something like that available to you?

:)

Oh ok..

Yeah! I'm not on the diploma track, I'm only on the certified track. I like it because my school can't give me a Detention or anything. I wish I can get my diploma but it's not end of the world because I still get to walk on stage and they hand me my certificate of participation.

https://www.housingservices.com/schools/tx/lincoln/grandprairie/pricing.htm

This is what dorms cost at Lincoln Tech.

No sorry! This is in Grand Prairie, Texas.