I pretty much agree with you Jay. People need to stop blaming other factors other than themselves, because that's where it usually lies.

There are always exceptions, however. Some people do actually try to get a job and no one is hiring or they do try to do good in school but they flat out just aren't that smart.

Yeah, for the most part, i was born in china, came to the US and started 4th grade here. I didn't speak any english at the time (didnt even know the alphabets beyond ABCD). I am now a physician making a comfortable living after alot of hardwork in high school, college, medical school, and residency. So I am going to vote "yes", i think if you define success by having a good career, feeling fulfilled in life, being able to live comfortably, and at the end of the day you knew that you have made a difference in someone else's life (by that i mean, even if u work as car mechanics you are making a positive change in someone's life by fixing their car) then you have "succeeded".

And if you are wondering, yes, I didn't really use much money from my parents. Most of the tuition from college and med school were loans; maybe 10% of it came from scholarships. I owe the lenders $201,000, now its down to 150,000 and i am on a 10 year plan, paying 2100 a month for tuition i accumulated from the 8 yrs of schooling. So yes, if u r thinking about going back to school, there is always loans available too. (interest a bit high nowadays though, try to avoid those Grad Plus 8% if you can)

That's easy to say, but environment is extremely important. If a child's parents don't encourage or support them in school, how are they supposed to develop good study habits? Should we expect grade school children to think about their future even if their parents do not? Most people will end up going as far in school as their parents and that certainly isn't coincidence. I see no reason to minimize environment.

And anyway, unless you go into nursing, what does community college get you? Education has become the new method of social stratification, with many careers placing a Bachelor's degree -in any field- above a 2-year degree in a relative field. Upward mobility is very low in the United States; social stratification exists and education disparity is one cause. The job market is a competition, and the kid with parents who offer no support will end up competing against those who had all the advantages that money and a higher social class could buy.

Beyond that, working-class jobs have dried up, as factories have moved wholesale to developing countries. These are jobs that were once the backbone of our economy.

It really annoys me when people imply that a career is a community college course away, or that not being able to find a job is the fault of the person looking. I say that as a person who got their 2-year degree last summer and is still searching. My last interview actually felt really good, but when I asked about my chances the interviewer grimaced a bit said that they expected around 500 applications for 15 positions. I didn't get the job. At this point, I'm not even worried about finding a career in my field, I just want any job, yet with that degree and past management positions on my resume, all I get are rejections. Yesterday I got one from CVS.

And people are going to tell me it's because I'm lazy or I didn't try hard enough? Yeah, well, I think I'm just going to bite my tongue.

Good luck with your work search, employment is stabilizing at least from what I hear on the NPR. Best of luck. On the other hand, I encourage people to consider the medical field. In general, there is a great job stability even though I am getting squeezed by the government as an inpatent doc. They fixed the Medicare reimbursement for outpatient but not inpatient; stole from Paul and gave it to Pete sort of situation now. It will be interesting to see what CMS (center for medicare) will do for all the re-admissions of chronic disease that they decide not to pay.. most of these patients would have not made it to being "re-admitted" in the first place. Mostly end-stage liver, lung, heart, kidney patients. (sorry, i rant)...

Thank you.  Medical jobs seem to out-number everything else here 3-to-1.  I have a relative who wants to be a nurse, but the schools in this area have huge waiting lists for those courses.  I'd even going back to school for something in the medical world if I could but I think my financial aid is used up.  My degree is in the technology segment but everything relative I've seen requires either a Bachelor's or 2 years of experience.

Also, privately I will admit that the community college course I completed was woefully lacking.  Not once did we touch a server or router hands-on, and we never even opened up a PC case.  Those things weren't in the program's budget.  I can honestly say that I learned more on my own.

I wouldn't 'waste' your time opening up PCs with an actual "course", i build my first PC from scratch the last year of my high school back in 2002 when I was working at a small hardware computer store where we build customized PC for customers. It's a pretty easy thing to learn how to do, basically just grab a motherboard that would support all the stuff you need, from there on out is just plugging things in and a few screws. You can learn it in a day or so.

Well, some of the nursing programs are getting expensive too i heard. But becareful what kind of nurse you choose to be, as there are a few different kind. LVN, RN, NP, so on. I would suggest to stay away from LVN if you can, RN gets paid better. But LVN programs are short and much faster. If you like drawing blood, you can get a plebtomy license very easily, few months of training and you are ready to work, but they do not tend to pay as well (but it's a good stepping stone). Another stepping stone is EMS (emergency responder that brings people to hospital); you do ambulance ride along and even helicopters ride along. Those programs always hiring and program is very short and does not require much formal University classes either (u can even do it right out of high school). A few things to sort of "get things started" then you can go to school for something more substantial while you get soem food on the table.

From IT side of things, US gov mandated complete switch to EMR (electronic medical records) i think deadline is 2015 (don't hold me to that, need fact check); we will need ALOT of software and networking people in the medical field. Need trainers as well as people fixing servers and maintenance as well. If that's what you went to school for, focus on medical EMR, it will be area of massive growth for the forseable future so you can probably find a job easily.

I've been pretty unproductive and unsuccessful for about 3 years now. Why? because I've been sick and in and out of dr's offices who can't figure out wtf is wrong with me. If this keeps up is it my fault? I've been to about 9 dr's. 6 Specialists, and 3 general practitioners. They all agree something is wrong, but don't know what so they just keep passing me around to the next one. Not sure if they're lazy or just don't give a damn, but all I know is in the last 3 years I've done nothing with my life.

I can guarantee you that no doctors would like to see their patients sick, we have no shortage of sick people. I wish they would stop coming. There are still alot of medical problems that we do not know about and I suspect some rare conditions are not even described in textbooks.  There are also alot of 'vague' shit that is poorly defined such as fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, so on so forth...those diagnosis are sort of 'trash basket' diagnosis and are diagnosis of 'exclusion'. But i cannot speak for your '9' doctors. What kinds of symptoms are you experiencing exactly?

Umm what exactly are we classing as unsuccessful here? How are we measuring success??