here's my story
went to junior college for two years full time even though i wanted to take a year off right after high school. I played baseball, had a part time job at a ski shop and also doing yard maintenance and also went to school full time. completely overloaded myself. had to stop baseball due to injury then I was going to college part time, taking 3 classes and working more. throughout that time, I went from wanting to be a teacher, to business major, then teacher, then back to business. then I took a semester off and just worked at the ski shop. I knew that right then and there I wanted to work for myself, so I figured I'd go back to school and work towards opening my own shop one day. I went to a University, ended up hating the whole program at this certain private univesity. So I took another semester off and partied my ass off while working at the ski shop. Then the ski shop went out of business, I gave the university one more effort only to realize that "yeah this is why i took time off cuz I hate this school and want to do nothing more than ride." there are two mountains in plain sight of this certain university. One is ten thousand feet, the other is 14 thousand feet, both have snow year around. During this last sememster, I was working at a big box store and I missed riding all the time and missed all the hookups of working at a core shop, so i said fuck all this, made a quick and firm decision to move to tahoe to ski bum and figured that if I worked my ass off, met some people along the way and rode as much as humanly possible, that shit would all work out...and it did, so far. You just have to have the right attitude and always focus on the positive, NO MATTER WHAT, and most of the time, you'll be just fine. If you're religious, do what works for you.