Which would be a more smart idea? (I want to major in Digital Media) …
I love making music on the side but I know that won’t put food on my table… would it be better to learn a trade to make a living or go 4 years in digital media and find a job? If trades… please suggest which trade too please… thank you…
Well, that depends on you.
My brother hated sitting still in school. He liked physical work; he wanted to go to work as quickly as possible, so instead of going to college he did a trades training program to become an electrical line worker. He does that now; he’s been doing it for 6-7 years. He recently got his journeyman license (which means he’s not an apprentice anymore), which comes with elevated responsibility and a raise. He makes a decent living: he bought a house when he was like 19 or 20, and owns two cars, and basically lives a good middle-class lifestyle with his job. He is sort of worried about the physicality of the job when he’s in his 50s and doesn’t want to climb poles anymore, so I think he plans on earning a degree in business admin, but he can do it part-time and his job will pay.
There are lots of good “trades” (which I broadly define as jobs that require technical school or special/on-the-job training programs, as opposed to formal college) that pay well and allow workers to make middle-class wages. Plumbers and electricians are two of those fields. There’s also HVAC technicians and construction work and carpentry. There are lots of trades within the medical field - radiologic and x-ray technicians, ultrasound technicians, certified nursing assistants, dental hygienists (although many BA programs in this field are popping up, and many dentists are hiring hygienists with BAs), nursing programs (same problem here - many hospitals and clinics are only hiring BSN-level nurses), respiratory technicians, rehabilitation aides, and occupational and physical therapist’s assistants. I suggest that you poke around a little on the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Occupational Outlook Handbook website - there are job descriptions including average pay and how much the occupation will grow in the next 10ish years there.
One thing to remember about trades, though, is that there’s usually an upper ceiling that you hit wrt salaries. A couple people here will say stuff like plumbers can make $100K, but the vast majority of plumbers don’t make that much money. Another thing to remember is that increasingly it’s difficult for even skilled trades to move up beyond a certain point into management or white-collar jobs. My dad has been working in transit for over 30 years, since after he graduated from high school. However, a few years ago he was trying to move into a management position - when he had about 25-30 years of experience - and struggled; he watched younger candidates with much less experience leapfrog over him because they had a bachelor’s degree. A similar thing happened to my mother, who’s a licensed practical nurse (LPN; a nurse with a shorter technical diploma program training, as opposed to a registered nurse (RN), who has a longer more formal course of training). My mom had been working in a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) along with other duties at her hospital for 5 years with no complaints and lots of accolades. But when her larger unit hired a new supervisor, that supervisor deemed that only RNs could work in the NICU, and my mom was no longer allowed to do the work that she’d been doing for years - while much less experienced RNs were allowed to.
If you can see yourself wanting to get into management later on, then a BA is a good idea. It’s also a good way to hedge your bets - since on average BA holders make a lot more than HS degree holders or technically trained skilled workers over the course of their careers. However, digital media is one of those fields that’s kind of difficult to break into at a high level - so it really depends.