NEKid":1eolzilv said:
I enjoy working with cattle,I enjoy being on a horse,I enjoy living faaaar away from the cities and other people. I wouldn't go out and be a doctor just because it pays $100,000/year
Golly this sounded just like me when I was your age. I loved working with cattle (minus the cayuse), wouldn't dare think about living in the city and being around people, and never wanted to be something akin to a doctor or lawyer or any of that office-y stuff. And yet, not being homeschooled and coming from a public school system AND going through university AND having some job where I HAD to work with people put a whole different perspective up for me. When I worked at a local farm supply store I was shy as all get out but had to learn that to succeed was to be around other people, and to be able to associate and converse with people of all types and backgrounds.
Of course being a sales-person (a job I vow to never go back to again) is a little different than being a beef producer, but still if you want to sell your self or your product to the right people, be it a pot load of soggy steer calves or your services to be a custom grazer (hypothetically speaking), or even approach someone you don't know to negotiate and barter to buy some calves or equipment off of, you really need to not want to be faaar away from other people. Even if you get to the point of considering selling meat to consumers coming in from some city somewhere you gotta be comfortable being with them. I don't think you are terribly shy (you don't sound like it), but still, it goes full-circle back to "how to make money in the cattle business?": PEOPLE SKILLS and COMMUNICATION is one of the most important skills you will need to succeed, even in life in general.
College or university can teach you a lot of things, but I've found through my own experiences is that it doesn't teach you enough people skills: Effective communication (verbally especially), needs assessments, reading body language (to an extent), conflict resolution, negotiation, even real patience when you've got someone dumber than a sack of nails who can't seem to understand what you're trying to say. Especially in buying and selling you will run into that as you get up there in years, trust me on that. Money talks, but it can sink ships too if you're not careful.
And yakker's got a good point. That college degree can get you into places where a high school diploma can't. I too know people who haven't finished college or just have a high school diploma and they have a fairly decent job, but there's bills to pay too and some of those jobs aren't enough if there are bills and loans and expenses to consider with just living a half-decent life, let alone with raising cattle, if that. I know the loans with the degree can be a pain, but with where I'm going, for example, I've got something lined up that I really hope to get (things are sounding good so far, fingers crossed) that pays very good and is right up my alley as far as my own interests are concerned.
And six years ago I was in serious consideration of never going back to my then-unfinished degree again. Of course I could find some jobs but like with all jobs you start from the bottom. And university hadn't taught me much in how to work with people using the skill sets I mentioned above. I went through quite the learning curve, and had several missed opportunities as well all because I didn't have a complete degree. Actually a lot of the jobs that I would've loved to have then needed a completed degree of some sort which I didn't have, and that alone shook me awake and got me into finishing it up so I could get into something I really wanted to, being beef, forage, pasture, rangeland, or all of the above. So you'd be surprised at where a degree can take you.
NEKid, you've got the whole world in front of you, and a whole lot of choices at your finger tips. And you've gotten a lot of great advice already. I think I've said enough for this really early morning, but want to add a couple other things:
1) Remember Murphy's Law, and
2) Nothing EVER goes to plan, no matter if it's thought out in your head or written in detail on paper. And sometimes you have to get a little religious to hope that it does.