[gibspaulding]

Not too different a story here. I worked for a roofing company through college. It was a good job in many ways. It was a union shop so benefits/safety/etc were great, and journeyman scale was actually more than I make now. It would have been a great gig through my twenties, but I had coworkers tell me over and over to stay in school and that I didn't want to end up like them.

I got a degree in Math and a minor in CS thanks to income based scholarships, but ended up bouncing around for a while in various IT and computer adjacent jobs not making a ton of money, and not loving being cooped up inside, so I sometimes wonder if I'd have been better off just accepting a apprenticeship, but I've been working towards "the good life" as you say, so in the long run I think college will have been the right choice.