To clarify a misconception: I no longer have, for the most part, a speech impediment. If you look back at the speech thread I have linked to you will see that I have actually concluded it by stating that my self-improvement venture in that area was successful. My original problem was that I couldn’t properly distinguish between the /s/ and /th/ (voiced and unvoiced) sounds in my speech (e.g. I would say “bass” instead of “bath” or “thick” instead of “sick”), but now that I have had my error pointed out and been taught how to distinguish the sounds by the placement of my tongue my problem is almost entirely cured. I say only mostly because I do from time to time slip up.
Also, my hearing-impairment, at least in regards to how I live my life, is more a thing of quality of sound rather than intensity of volume. In other words, my deafness on the high end of the pitch scale affects how I hear people more so than how loudly I hear them. It is very strange to say this, but I actually hear better without my old analog hearing-aids than I did while wearing them, so I’ve stopped wearing them altogether. As to how this relates to my employment prospects, I may have particular problems with people who have foreign accents or with people who mumble, but in general I can go about my life just fine as if I were a hearing person. (But turn on those closed-captions!)
So, let’s say school costs you five to seven thousand dollars a year. I have lived on twelve thousand dollars a year before, it sucks but it is possible. You could work a “crap” job to pay for your life, and go to school on government loans, and eventually get your degree. It sounds like you’re in a prime spot in your life to do so, anyway: a lot of time on your hands and not a lot to do.
Whereas life is much harder when you are starting from scratch without any family support at all, it is certainly possible. I’ve done it. You may wind up feeling good about yourself because of it, too. You do not need your family to do the things I’ve described. But if you’re going to go back to school, you need to go for something that will actually make you money. That is very important. You don’t want to wind up with a doctorate in Women’s Studies and sixty grand in school debt (or much more), with no way to pay it off. You also must be dedicated to and sure of your life direction. There is no sense in striving for a goal (school) that you hate or don’t care about.
To be honest I have been considering going back to college, which would be a good thing at this point since my mind would actually be in agreement with my actions (I did some introspecting and identified that I do have some confidence after all), but I still don’t know what kind of career I would want to go into. Originally I wanted to be a writer, but I abandoned that goal when upon introspection I discovered it wasn’t as big a value in my life as I originally thought it was. I do know, however, that I place a big value on knowledge, good epistemology, philosophy, and the like, and that going to college may in fact help me in my pursuit of knowledge since it might boost my motivation to learn properly and thoroughly (consequences of learning more readily available in form of feedback from teachers); I have, after all, helped arm myself against bad habits and bad epistemology by reading various self-help books such as “Study Methods and Motivation” or the majority of “Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology” (I’m two sections away from completing it entirely). Would you say that I shouldn’t go back to college until I have determined what it is that I want to go into as a career?
Here’s what I have been thinking in regards to funding: I have enough money to pay for one semester, but what I could do is go half-time (two classes) so that I may readjust myself to the setting (the workload shock contributed to my doing poorly the first time), have enough time to put thorough effort in what little work I have, and have enough time to do my own personal studying. By this I hope to accomplish establishing better habits than I had the first time and to more easily demonstrate to college officials that I’m a serious and good student, because at my alma mater I am on academic probation.
My other two funding concerns are that of food (a proper diet is essential for proper brain function, strong memories, and consistent energy levels) and values (life must be worth living in the meanwhile). However, I do believe that to some extent food and value-pursuit can be integrated: cooking and baking is a budding hobby of mine.
What do you think?
It’s definitely difficult to find a job you can do these days because due to the recession businesses have cut back instead of expanded. I’ve been looking for over a month and I have a strong work background. What I’ve been doing is looking over the job boards and applying to anything I think I can do. There are some places where you only need a high school education and they are willing to train. It’s difficult for me because I’m having to switch fields from retail picture framing to something else in sales. By applying to many jobs per day I’ve been getting one interview every week or so, but that takes a lot of work and one has to keep at it. Some of the job boards that let’s you post a resume are careerbuilder.com, Yahoo! hotjobs.com, and craigslist.org. Just keep looking and keep applying and you could get something. Depending on how bad your speech is or your hearing, you could probably land a sales job or telemarketing. I tried telemarketing for a little while and found I couldn’t do it because there was no time for me to think with the phone calling out all of the time. There are a lot of seasonal retail jobs opening up, but those will be temporary, but they will be good on your resume.
I am entertaining the notion that perhaps going back to college may be the best for improving my job prospects. On top of the fact that my past has hurt my employment prospects, I live in Michigan, and near the economically worst parts of Michigan too! I just went to a job fair at a mall near me, and when I arrived ten minutes earlier than it was scheduled to begin I had found that dozens of people had already lined up.
First, I’m just going to reiterate what John and JASKN said - apply to everything.
Secondly - BEEF UP YOUR RESUME MAN! Even without much work experience, everyone has softskills that they can use in every job. Whatever skills you’ve gained from being on your own (better reasoning skills, better interpersonal communication, typing, reading, skilled with various software, research skills, multitasking, any kind of qualification or skill - even mad juggling skills or nunchuk skills). Highlight your good points, and leave any bad points out until they ask you in the interview (ie what are some of your weaknesses? why did you quit school?) That’s when you hit them with all that stuff, but keep it positive. Like, “I realized the program I was in wasn’t working for me so I left to pursue other career paths”, and then you say what you’ve learned in that time. Another answer you can use is your hearing impairment and speech impediment, but the positive there is your drive to be better and excel, and that can be applied to your career goals.
I’ll do some thinking in this area, but what do you mean by “softskills”?
I always had good luck with Temp positions. I would usually do a good job and get offered a permanent position. You should contact a few temp agencies in your area. Its in their interest to get you a job asap.
Hmm…temp agencies? Is that how I would go about looking them up?
Ben%, you mentioned being reclusive, well I’m a relcusive introvert myself, and find working in this department suiting me, since I clean physician offices in the evenings during the week (spending most of the time alone, and not even seeing a boss for days! 
), and on the weekends I’m the hospitals courier.
Hmm! I never thought about the hospital! Now there’s a thought! But to be clear, what I said was that I was reclusive, not that I am now. Sure, I am still introverted, but I am well past my childhood stage where I actively avoided social confrontation. I just mentioned that to make clear that I’m still at the starting line in regards to social networking in the business part of my life.
Probably the easiest and quite effective way is to sign up to a recruitment agency in person and let them find you jobs, as responding to advertisements rarely results in employment, unless it is a large organisation that takes on a hundred or so staff for basic temporary seasonal work.
Your CV is pretty bare but you could expand on it by describing some of the skills you have used while in education and some achievements. You also need to describe what it is that you want, generally speaking and what you are good at.
Check out a career guidance book called What Colour is Your Parachute, I found it helpful in finding my transferable skills and how to approach companies.
I will take note of that book, but some questions: 1.)by what formal concept are recruitment agencies referred to by, and 2.) what does CV stand for?
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Thank you all for your responses. This has done quite a bit already in alleviating my stress.