Degree or no degree.

I'll never tell anyone to pass up an education, especially if low-paying work is the alternative. We're not talking about someone making $100K, we're talking about ramen wages in all likelihood.

 

I started working in the newspaper industry for free during my second semesterof college. I doggedly worked my up as I went through school, and eventually, the paying job overtook the non-paying classes. I was lucky enough to be hired fairly early in my career by someone who didn't care about my lack of degree. And I spent many years assuming my hard work early on in breaking into the business would cancel out, if not overwhelm, the fact I never got my degree. But now, 15-plus years into my career, I don't have a problem finding work, but my options are limited more and more by age and circumstance (specifically not having a degree), and there's probably no more than a handful of people left in the business who give a fuck that I took the road less traveled all those years ago. So, to paraphrase myself from earlier in this thread, get your damn degree.

 

Go to college. Find a good major -- engineering for example. Kick ass. Graduate. Get a decent job with a livable wage. Live out your "dream" of writing as a stringer in your free time. Enjoy not fucking up.

 

It's really, really hard to go back to college if you drop it for awhile, which I don't think anyone who went straight from high school (or close to it) to college realizes. Just losing that momentum is killer, not to mention the possibility of running into issues with credits and enrolling again, and trying to work your class schedule around whatever else life will throw at you in a year or two. Plus, tuition costs go up every year. The most painless way to do it is to get it all done in one go.

And pretty much what everyone else said. Get the degree. There are some opportunities that are worth skipping out on school for, but this doesn't seem like one of them.