Would you ever leave your job to go back to school?

[Daedius]

Been working as a programmer for two decades. Sick of it.

Currently studying Aeronautical Engineering. Want to do practical work with my hands.

[Pony Soldier]

If it's a good paying job where I can afford to have a car, my own place and be able to buy groceries and have a little money left over to spend for myself or save up? No. If I am able to do those things without a college degree then there's no point in going back to school, I'm successful enough. Otherwise maybe.

Right now I'm fortunate enough to be able to still live with my parents so there's not much I have to pay for so there's really no need to go to school. However the reality is that I want my own place and right now I can't afford it even with my full time job. Apartment costs are fucking crazy. I'd barely be able to get by if I lived on my own. So going to school and getting a degree in something might be the best thing to do.

[Minikin]

I just left my job as a chef this year to go back to school for Electrical Engineering, so yes I would quit my job to go back to school.

Good luck man!

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Shitty a job would take a degree over real world experience.

No I would not quit to go to school. I hated the dick out school past grade 9. Was a waste of my time.

Eh they didnt have much of an option. After my last promotion I would have been responsible for stamping engineering drawings rather than just implementing. Before I would design something but send it out for approvals and licenses. Since I didnt have a degree I wasnt a licensed member and thus couldnt do those approvals.

So decided to leave. In the end though the pay from that job while good was not as great as higher engineering pays ($90,000 with about 8 hours overtime). While some of the other companies can provide upwards of 100k if you are an engineer with industrial experience.

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No, fuck school. My life up until I started to work was basically Study, study, study and then study some more. I'm so done with school now.

lol there are many a nights where i think exactly like that. "you had a pay cheque coming now you are paying to go through all nighters, you are a special kind of dumb arent you?"

[vindicatorx]

Would you ever quit your job to go to back to school? If yes, what would you go for?

For those that did, did you ever feel detached from the younger students?

Did it, from 2010-2014 was working in Law enforcement. I couldn't stand how shitty people were on both sides, the whole job made me depressed. I went back for Computer Science and graduated in 2014 been doing that since about to start looking for an intermediate position soon.

Yeah, I did feel detached, I mean when you are 32 and everyone else is 18-22, you are going to get that. That and I'll be real, kids these days are a lot different than we were in 2000. I mean in 2000 when I first went to college no one had cell phones, people communicated to the people around them. I saw people walk into signs, trees, and the side of a bus all because they were on their phones. No one interacts anymore.

I lived in student housing all 3 years I was at the main campus. I lived in the upperclassmen student housing which is generally housing for short term study abroad students, and the problematic students who couldn't find roommates for the university apartments. Made friends with about 5-6 people living in the building and still keep in contact with them today.

How did I accomplish going back at 32 with no money? I had 2 grants and after my first year back I made dean's list and got some scholarship for old farts who return and have good grades. I took out student loans for housing and living expenses and that total was almost $40k.

I don't regret it at all, I now work a cake job where people treat each other all right for the most part. I make a lot more money and about half the time I just work from home so there's that as well. I've actually considered taking an online Master's Degree in my spare time. because it would open more opportunities. And that is the whole point of going back and getting that degree. It gives you opportunities you wouldn't get otherwise if you didn't have one.

[Dispraise]

I wouldn't even need to quit, but still no.

Since I have all the degrees I can get and nobody cares about degrees in the field I work in, only the performance in the job....a clear no.

Reminds me of a friend of mine. Pursued 360 degrees only to end up right where he started.

[Kudos]

I work in Education and really enjoy it.

I'm not interested in going back to Uni to do another degree.

[Witchblade77]

I have sorta done it. in that I went back to school but I still had a job (not the same as part time job, while in school - i did full time for both). it was... incredibly rough. I did it for 1.5 years and I have no bloody clue how people manage to do this for 4. even while working essentially in the same industry as what I was going to school for, so there was an overlap, it was still the blurriest time of my life. I ended up quitting my job for the last semester.

quitting a job to go back to school would require degree of financial security that I still don't have. and/or full scholarship (the kind that also covers living expenses).

[Aggrophobic]

If I didn't have a degree, sure.
I loved school, at all levels.

I'm happy with where I am today but if I managed to get myself financially independent then picking up school again might be an option. It's not very likely but still.

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Reminds me of a friend of mine. Pursued 360 degrees only to end up right where he started.

Ahaha! It's an old one but it's just as good, every time.

[Deldavala]

Why leave the job to go back to school?

Just do both things at the same time. Atleast for easier degrees that is possible

[SirBeef]

My choice was to quit my shitty low wage job and go to school or start my own business. If my business failed I would have slummed it and gone back to school. Luckily it succeeded. I may still go back to school when I sell my company to my employees in a few years and retire.

[Rotted]

Its 3:54am, and I am in that zone of: cant focus enough to study, not tired enough to sleep.

Two years ago, I quit my job to go back to school. I used to work as an engineer but did not have an engineering degree. After multiple promotions I was told this is the max, because you do not have the degree or license. So I quit my job to go to university and study Mechanical Engineering (I had a diploma in Instrumentation and Control Engineering).

Would you ever quit your job to go to back to school? If yes, what would you go for?

Have you ever wanted to quit your job but never did? Why not?

For those that did, did you ever feel detached from the younger students?

Sounds like you did right tbh, a lot of companies who take on people like yourself usually want to keep you around due to time investment so it's a bit shitty they didn't offer to fund you through a degree in exchange for a x amount of years contract with them when you finished. I have quite a few friends who went straight into work, got to where you were then handed the funding for 3 years in uni to come out to a much higher position with a much bigger wage packet. Hell one of them is with a petrol station.

As for me I did the same. I finished college with doing computers but due to the area I lived in, I ended up painting and decorating. I hit the point where my boss was happy to leave do an entire job without him if it involved no wall papering (He refused to teach me the 'proper' way to do it incase I went off on my own business), thing is I never saw a pay raise, no perks. He was insistent I worked for him as self employed so I didn't get sick pay or holiday pay or anything. It was pretty shitty. Anyways in the third year I was doing a job on a new build so I was on sight with the builders. One of them I got chatty with told him I wanted to work with animals etc. He pretty much broke down in tears out of no where and reveled he had a rough 5 years left of life due to his medical condition, essentially he was a walking time bomb. He said he was in the same position when he was younger where he just started a job to get by and 15 years later he was still doing it.

That's the point where I realised, I either stay home and work as a painter in the area for the rest of my life or I can put my foot down to my folks and say I was off (I was 19/20 at the time and still treated like a delusional 15 year old). So thats what I did, I found somewhere that was doable and affordable.

That was 7 years ago, I'm now a fully qualified Zoologist but have another 4 years of post graduate education to come to be able to do what I want fully. It's been hard, theres been failure after failure but theres also been success, I've been financially crippled to the point I was living on 5p reduced sandwhiches from the college staff, nearly made myself ill from lack of nutrition (I mean literally a bread roll the half the size of your fist and some filling was all I had every day, and on fridays if I didn't get to the canteen quick enough, I'd have to make the one last the weekend) and walking 15 mile round trip a day to get to and from college.

But it was all worth it in the end. If leaving your job for a subject you love or need to progress and you can support yourself through it one way or another then it's absolutely worth doing.

[Spectral]

I've considered it at times, particularly when I was really unhappy as a postdoc, but it's harder to see the path to there now that I have a career that I'm reasonably happy with. The main way I could see considering that is a few years down the road, if I have enough invested to support the same lifestyle I presently live (which actually wouldn't take that much), taking a couple years off from work to go learn some new things and try something new out. I have a Ph.D. a decade of research experience, and now a few years of experience with IT and project management, which is a pretty good based for a number of other lines of work. I could see potentially going back to school for either patent law or public policy, which don't strictly require qualifications to get in on the ground floor, but generally do require that for getting into the higher levels of the professions.

[Hashtronaut]

Why quit your job?
You could work and go to school at the same time. I work while getting my masters.

[Kithelle]

Maybe if I knew what I wanted to do...

[Twix]

I quit my job working as a financial auditor because it was too boring and pay was kinda low for the number of hours worked. I am now back in school and studying to become a dentist.

[Deleted]

Fuck no, I finished my bachelors few months ago, got a job and I am still realizing how my last 22 years of life were pathetic compared to what I have now.
Fuck these old geezers that literally tell you that you have to do some stupid project/some retarded homework and dare to fucking judge you if you forget how to do some mathematic problem or smth.
I mean like... what the fuck?
Ppl have kids, money problems, relationship/family problems, try to go to work to have some money and they still they try to study, but some oh-so wannabe professor that has degree treats you like a little fuck because he is the "professor".

And no, I was one of the better students and it is a really good university, but I hated almost every moment of it. When I started to work - and I do really important stuff - I realized how trivial, retarded and not needed my uni years were.

[chubbybunny]

Many Moons ago, back in the late 80's, i was an computer operator and self taught with programming... Went for a job as a programmer, but as my code was compact and not "Education taught" laid out (I wrote some code to show them what i could do and did it in half the amount of coding that they were taught)... I was told i wouldn't get a job without qualifications...

So went back and got a degree in software engineering... Applied at old job, got told they now prefer people with enthusiasm and intelligence to be taught how they want it written rather than education taught....

so all that time was wasted, for a piece of paper that says i'm over qualified.... 25 years later.. Most languages i learned my trade on are being taught in history of computer language :'(

[cainejw]

I actually did. Well, I tried to work initially. I went to school for my MSW degree and managed to work the first year working two part time jobs and going to school full time while holding internships. It eventually got to be too much stress, so I had to quit the jobs and live just on loans for the second year. Since I'm now at the top of my field and a PhD or DSW wouldn't advance me anywhere, I'm likely done with school.

As for detachment, not really. I was already considered a non-traditional student at the time I started my BA. Most of the people I met were just as busy and focused as I was.

[Logwyn]

Too many variables to consider in the question.

Are you earning good money?

Will you stick to what you're studying in college?

Are you likely to get a job with what you're studying?

Will you have to move to get a job with the degree etc?

Personally, I wouldn't go back to school now unless it was something I really enjoyed and had a passion for and also was a near guarantee that I'd get a job at the end of it, which are both very unlikely.

I also earn good money and doubt I'd be able to beat it with a bog standard degree and would have to do something like a Masters to really get anywhere, and that isn't happening.

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That's good idea, unfortunately for me I wouldn't be able to go part time with my job.

It helps having other income coming in than just me working ^_^

[Dug]

I'm in school and working but no if after I get my bachelors and begin working full time nothing will make me stop working to go back and do my graduate. If I can't manage it and my job then its not worth pursuing imo