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my future?
I'm 18 in april. I left highschool a year early with a diploma equivalent thing. I am intelligent but have always sucked at school because I have an unusual difficulty in doing work. This difficulty has been evident since early elementary school, and had an increasingly significant effect on my life as I got older. In highschool my grades sucked. Although I usually got great test scores.
Right now, my parents pay for my shelter, food, and utilities. I want to start living on my own, which means I'm going to need a way to stay alive.
What should I do?
I want to learn more about buddhism. I don't know if I want to become a monk or not. If I don't become a monk, I need something to do with my life! Something I would like to do would be to invent machines that make living easier.
No matter what I end up doing in the future, I should have a backup plan for making money, because I need to be able to pay for food and shelter at all times. And preferably not with a slave-like occupation. Something I can imagine myself doing is machining. Operating mills and lathes, which nowadays are all computerized but still pays well.
Unfortunately, the nearest place that offers a certificate program in machining started their quarter two weeks ago and it's too late to apply. So I'd have to wait until April 5.
It would be great if there was a place where they accepted labor in exchange for a buddhist education, because I don't have money. Do you think a monestary would let me study and there for a while if I did some sort of work for them?
Do you guys have any advice for me?
Thanks.
Right now, my parents pay for my shelter, food, and utilities. I want to start living on my own, which means I'm going to need a way to stay alive.
What should I do?
I want to learn more about buddhism. I don't know if I want to become a monk or not. If I don't become a monk, I need something to do with my life! Something I would like to do would be to invent machines that make living easier.
No matter what I end up doing in the future, I should have a backup plan for making money, because I need to be able to pay for food and shelter at all times. And preferably not with a slave-like occupation. Something I can imagine myself doing is machining. Operating mills and lathes, which nowadays are all computerized but still pays well.
Unfortunately, the nearest place that offers a certificate program in machining started their quarter two weeks ago and it's too late to apply. So I'd have to wait until April 5.
It would be great if there was a place where they accepted labor in exchange for a buddhist education, because I don't have money. Do you think a monestary would let me study and there for a while if I did some sort of work for them?
Do you guys have any advice for me?
Thanks.
0
Comments
It's great that you want to make your own way, though! I know people in their 30's who are unemployed, live at home, and play World of Warcraft all day.
Is there some kind of schooling you can do in the meantime? Welding? Something at the learning annex of your community college?
As for the Buddhist education, I'm sure there is a Buddhist center somewhere near you. Maybe you should go and talk to them directly. You can get a Buddhist education and still be a layperson.
As for machining, is there some sort of apprenticeship you can do at a factory/mill near you? Maybe you can talk to the college and find if something you can do to help you get a job after education?
As for your parents, tell them "thank you". Trust me, they'll appreciate it.
To help me keep track of things, I am posting these links that were recommended to me by Brother Bob in another thread.
http://www.vajrapani.org/Site/workstudy.htm
http://landofmedicinebuddha.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=341&Itemid=623
Good questions. I'm 20 and I think I can give a little helpful advice.
The key to your future, whether it be monastic or that of a layperson, is to have a marketable skill set. As you are not sure of a particular field of study, and coupled with the fact that you admit yourself that school is difficult for you, I would not recommend going to a university. I've met too many tragic students who were corralled into going to college (because every child should they say!) and within a year or two, they dropped out and had essentially sunk $30,000 or more for nothing.
Don't waste your money on a university if it can be avoided. If you do decide to start some higher education, go to a community college to at least get all the general ed credits out of the way first.
Just judging my what you've said here, I'd highly encourage you to pursue some sort of trade school training. Don't be discouraged if you didn't do well in high school. I think it's a travesty how obsessed our culture is with education. It borders on snobbery and contempt how non-college graduates are often viewed, or God forbid the child of Yale-educated parents wants to hammer nails and do carpentry for a living. :rolleyes:
Even if you do decide to go the monastic route, it will be very helpful to have some experience with a trade that you can hopefully support yourself with should you leave the monastery.
There could be many reasons your were not so good at school, but it shouldn't get you down. All you need is a little determination and a bit of direction and there'll be no stopping you.
As for what to do between "now" and "then", my advice would be to suck it up and get a job! (a bit harsh, I'm sorry) but that's what I had to do to survive. That's what we all have to do to survive. I'm pretty sure everyone here has had a horrible job that they hated but worked in because they needed the money. It's a part of life and a part of growing up. I worked in McDonalds from the start of college until after I finished Uni!
It could take years until you finally decide what you want to do. Sadly you'll need money to finally pursue your interests. Also, if you are really interested in Buddhism I'd reccommend you go on a retreat at a local buddhist centre. Why not give it a try? Throw yourself in the deep end.
In the mean time, I'd be really searching hard to find a job. Anything. McDonalds, Burger King, janitor, you name it. Don't just throw an application into a pile either. Really stress to potential employers that you want to work for them and how good you'll be.
Good luck!
This is a good time to get some career counseling. Many community colleges offer it for free or at a very low cost. There are also some good books, such as "What Color Is Your Parachute?". If you (or your parents) have the money, you can pay for the more expensive commercial variety. At various times I've done it all: community college, books, private sector programs, etc. It's all been helpful.
If you've never had career counseling, it's difficult to explain what happens. It usually doesn't lead directly to a job, but it does give you tools for understanding why you succeed in some jobs and not in others. It won't help you find the perfect job (there is no perfect job), but it will help you avoid jobs that make it hard to get out of bed in the morning. Basically, the jobs you hate are going to be the jobs that someone else loves, and the jobs you love are going to be the jobs that someone else hates. You want to know which jobs are which for you, and why.
In the meantime, meaningless deadend temporary jobs have a lot to teach you.
This is a good post. I had a similar experience in high school, being too lazy to do work and getting poor grades. I went to college the semester after I graduated and flunked out within 5 weeks. I'm back in college now and getting over my laziness, and my limited study of Buddhism has certainly helped in that regard, but it's a challenge everyday. To get up, go to classes, do the work in classes, do the homework, and then do it all again the next day takes discipline.
I agree that college is not for everyone. The key to college, in my opinion, is knowing what you're interested in. For me, political science is the answer. But it took me a few semesters to figure this out. The best thing you can do if you decide to avoid college, even if just temporarily, is find a job. It doesn't have to be good job, or even a job that you like. I didn't like any of the jobs I had after I flunked out of college the first time, though it certainly would help if you could find a good work environment if not a good job. The point of this is that you're 18 years old and to get a good job you need to have some real work experience behind you. The tragedy of our current "college is necessary age" is that you have all of these professional students who get their degrees but have hardly any work experience, and then go out into the real world and expect these businesses to take a chance on them.
Getting work experience is a very good thing, and can only make you more rounded even if you do decide to go to college later. You'll have the benefit of both work experience and higher education, which many honestly don't have this day and age.
brian
Somebody mention my name? Well, my advice would be that if you are interested in becoming a monk (in whatever type of Buddhism you study), it would be best to wait until you've lived a while. It's a lot different getting ordained in the West than in Asia. We don't have the chip in our heads here yet, so it's very difficult. In most place, there is no support for monastics, so we have to work for a living plus try to live as a monk, which is not at all easy and makes you very vulnerable to temptation (yikes!). Even if you don't have to work that's true as desire is everywhere in our culture. The people I have seen make it the best are those who have lived life and tasted of it, then decided to renounce it. Those who come in without having experienced what life has and full of unrealistic dreams almost always end up losing the dreams and becoming resentful, thinking they've missed out on life somehow. They almost always end up losing their ordination, which is not a good thing. Better to have never taken it in the first place.
Just my two centavos.
Palzang