When I went to computer school in 1982, I had a tough choice. I could go to school for ten months and get a Cobol IMS DB/DC programming job that paid maybe $7 an hour, or I could become a driver for UPS for $10 an hour.
Fortunately, I still went with the former, but it was a harder decision than it should have been. 23 years later, I am a 51 year old with 10 years experience as a programmer, and 11 years experience as a consulting programmer and I now teach tools to programmers.
At the peak, it was a hefty six figures. It's still nothing to thumb your nose at. And one of my new friends is exactly my age and trying to find something, anything to help him financially, for he is struggling. His employer treets him like dirt, his hours are bad and his income is not particularly good, especially for a man who is 51 with a family.
He is a driver for Fed-Ex.
I am not boasting for I firmly believe the Lord was behind all of this. The decisions I have made throughout my carreer have fallen into place even though I didn't have a clue what the outcome would be. Even my current job was a blessing. As with the discovery of the computer school, my discovery of this job was completely an "accident," yet it was what I was looking for for most of my programming career. One resume, one job.
BTW, I majored in pinball in college. Never completed so much as a quarter. Seems the Lord looked past that.
He said, "No one owes you a job just because you have a college degree."
His advice was to approach a job expecting to start on the bottom and then work like the dickens to move up. It's the kind of idea more young people need to be exposed to.
You must have been really good at pinball, to be on your original quarter the whole way through.