You Can’t Clown Around Forever: Finishing college gives you a lot more options

“So what the heck is there after high school? Well, it’s all basically up to you. Throughout elementary, junior high and high school, other people were responsible for you and what you did. When high school ends, you have to decide what you’re going to do with your life. Hopefully you’ve already made plans, so you won’t be baffled when the day comes. We’ve heard a million times that college is the best way to go. Is that true? Well, we here at LA Youth decided to put it to the test. We interviewed a few people and this is what they had to say:
Bryan Nash is a 29-year-old circus performer. He graduated from Luther Burbank High School, and went to the Air Force instead of college. His parents were fine with his decision. “I never really considered college. I screwed up way too much during high school.”
But the Air Force was not for him. “The military sucked!! I hated it. I got out of there quick.”
“Well, I tried a lot of different jobs. I was in sales, real estate, taxi driving; those are the recent ones, but my current job is circus performing. I mainly juggle, eat fire, clown, ride the unicycle and make balloon animals.”
Out of all the jobs that he has had, Bryan claims that this is his favorite. “What other job will fly you to Japan, give you a complementary hotel room and food, and pay you?”
But even though he is happy with his current job, Bryan does have some regrets about not going to college. “I’m fine now, but some day I’m not going to be able to do this job, and I’ve got nothing to fall back on. When I look at my friends who have gone to college, I see things that I don’t have. Their lives are at a steady, even pace. They work nine to five and get a steady pay check. They have certain things that I don’t have, like weekends and holidays off, summer vacations, you know, a real job. And, they get health insurance. That’s the biggie right there. That’s the one thing that I miss.”
When asked what message he would give to teens who don’t know whether or not they should go to college, Bryan replied, “You can succeed without college, but it’s a h— of a lot harder.”
Mikey Valderrama is a 24-year-old community college student who works at a 99-cents store. Now that he’s working full-time to support himself and his wife, he finds that this has slowed him down from finishing college. He’s now going on his sixth year at Los Angeles Community College.
Even though he was accepted to San Diego State University and went there for a while after graduating from John Marshall High at 17 years old, Mikey left after getting in a car accident. “I didn’t have any insurance, and I lost my license for a year, so I had to leave San Diego State for a while. I decided to go to Los Angeles Community College instead. It was much cheaper, and closer.”
What did his parents think about this? “They didn’t mind as long as I was going somewhere. One thing that they did do was emphasize college.”

He fooled around too much in high school
Mikey regrets that he did not make much effort in high school to prepare for college.
“When I was in high school, all I basically did was play volleyball, and hang around with my volleyball friends. Even though I was supposed to take my SAT’s in my junior year, I took them in my senior year, and applied to San Diego State later than I was supposed to. They accepted me just based on my SAT scores, and that was one thing that I was happy about.”
Even in college, Mikey lost opportunities because he was late. “I really didn’t get any counseling. Ninety percent of the classes that I needed were closed and I did not get to registration on time. One of the things that I regret is that I did not listen to my mother when she told me to declare a major. I believe that if I would have declared a major, and stuck to it, I would have been done with college by now.””

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