I barely finished the equivalent for you Americans of middle school. Even if my family could afford it I’m too socially inept for other studies plus I knew I couldn’t make it anywhere anyways…

It’s been almost 20 years since I’ve seen in a school. Life’s is a mess and I have almost no money and live with my family. Have a temporary job on warehouse

BS. But I’ve found that a person’s educational level doesn’t always translate into competency depending on the job. If I could do it all over again I would have gone to school to become an electrian.

I got the bachelor’s, and got a job that was totally unrelated.

That job paid for my masters.

I am now in a different job that has nothing to do with either of my degrees and I think I’d be happy here until retirement.

I initially dropped out of college because I wasn’t ready for it, twice. Went right into the workforce and felt a lot of struggle for many years and learned a lot about people, power, and the value of knowing how to open doors.

Later, in my late 30’s with an established professional career I went back to college at nights to work towards a bachelor’s degree for a field I already worked in. I found the education much more valuable this time around, and frankly, I was making better decisions at that point. I got a lot out of it, even with a great deal of the material being familiar, and even wish I had selected a major I didn’t have experience in so that I might have learned even more.

I’ll note that going back to school didn’t make economic sense for me since I had already established a career, I wanted to prove to myself I could and set a better example for my daughter. I probably wouldn’t have gone back if UoPeople hadn’t been so dirt cheap and flexible, big shout out to them for being so awesome and accessible. I spent way more failing twice than succeeding once :).

While I didn’t need the degree to get where I have gotten, I recognize that it may have gotten me some steps faster and certainly helps me not get prefiltered out by HR software for desirable roles I am well qualified for. I also recognize that I learned some really valuable things from being in the workforce first, that probably positively impacted my drive, social skills, and ultimately my earning ceiling.

I’m happy with my journey through education, I learned a lot both times around and eventually got a degree I didn’t need.

For formal education, I did all the coursework for a BA but couldn’t pay the last year worth of tuition, so I never got a degree.

Informal education is ongoing. I’ve improved my Spanish significantly and continued to study both information science and philosophy. I’d like to go back and get a teaching certificate, but it’s not urgent.

I got bachelors of science in biology. Couldn’t find a job because, unlike what my parents told me, a degree doesn’t guarantee you a job. I ended up going back to college to get a professional degree. I didnt like the profession after a few years so I quit. Now I work at a factory where a high school education is considered an asset. Some of my coworkers are high school drop outs. It is the easiest job I’ve worked and the most money I’ve ever made in my life thanks to the union.

While my education didn’t really help me get a job, it does allow me to think critically about the news which seems to be the biggest benefit.

I’ve got an undergraduate masters (graduated over a decade ago), I don’t think I’d have got much other than stress and more debt if I went for a PhD and have enjoyed my jobs generally following university.

I’d say I’m pretty happy with how things have gone. Though if I had the option (somehow without much financial and time impact) I’d probably take random masters courses every few years because I just enjoy learning.

High school.

Tried college. 3 times. Failed 3 times didn’t try a 4th.

Not satisfied with where I’m at. At my age I’m screwed. Trying to understand investing hopefully make a little money before I have to stop working.

Also got lucky and bought a house so I can rent it out. (It’s either that or the American people can give me money for social welfare so I’m not homeless after I quit working)

Currently researching my PhD. Satisfied with what I have done thus far and very happy where my focus landed.

Dropped out of college because I hated it. About to retire from a ~35 year career working for 2 well known companies as a senior software engineer. Very satisfied how things turned out.

About the same age as you OP. Halfway to a bachelor now after working all my twenties trying to figure out what to do in life.
Realized my education level wouldn’t allow me to achieve the goals I wanted so I threw myself at the University.

Hischool dropout. I later took a year of electronics with the intention of studying avionics, but it was put in hold due to mandatory military service in 2005. Then it was further put on hold because of a job offer that was tempting. And then further put on hold due to starting a nice career in 2008. I’m now 41, and I’ve long since concluded that I will never go back to studying. If I were to graduate with a masters in avionics or similar, I would earn maybe a 3rd of what I do now, plus my current job and career is pretty nice and cushy.

As for happy, yeah, I think so. I’m sure if I had any completed education, it would’ve probably been a lot easier the times I was between jobs. But at the same time, I suspect that if I had gone the traditional IT route I would’ve ended up in a more traditional IT job with all the nastiness that comes along with it; support tickets, fixed work hours, active directory, fixing printers, and worst of all: users.

1st time I went to college (2013) I studied for electrical and computer engineering, but had to drop out due to worsening depression and undiagnosed ADD.

Floated around in food service for a bit before working at a last mile delivery warehouse at Amazon. I hated amazon so much i enrolled in a different school and got my associates in IT support. The associates helped me get a job in eLMS support, which I love doing, but it always bothered me I never finished my bachelors so I went back to school a 3rd time for computer science. Made it a year in before I dropped out again because it felt like I was just being scammed despite the school being accredited and legit.

There were a lot of issues, but the major one was that all of the programmimg courses were “taught” entirely within pearson’s system. My professor wasnt teaching or grading anything, it was all done through pearson created lesson videos and person’s test/homework system. On top of the standard course fees and virtual system fee (covers upkeep of the school’s LMS), I was expected to pay an additional fee to pearson to access the entire course material. The school expected me to pay them to outsource my education to pearson and to pay the fees involved in said outsourcing.

Yeah, no, fuck that. After sending a lengthy email to my counselor and deparment, I dropped out and started teaching myself with material freely available online.

I have no regrets. Fuck pearson.

I quit my PhD program in Physics because the misery wasn’t going to be worth the eventual paycheck, especially because I refused to work for contractors in the military-industrial complex. I ended up working for a while and got an MS in Applied Statistics, which is meh. Physics actually interested me. Statistics bored the shit out of me but it was useful for the field I ended up in. But now I’m retired, which is pretty satisfying!

Got a bachelor’s degree, graduated in 2008.
Pretty satisfied right now. Worried that AI is gonna take my job (regardless of if it can do a good job at it, I don’t think bosses really care)