Hey guys! I’ve been thinking about taking a pretty big action in my life that will more than likely change a lot of my future. This may be a bit long of a read since I want to be descriptive of what exactly is making things riskier than they should be. To start off, I’m a 19 year old man in rural Alabama. My family could not afford college, so when I turned 18, I started working construction. The only jobs around here that are decent wage is working hard labor at the mill or owning something. After a promotion at my construction company, I am now a foreman for a contract our company set up that works within the mill. I am tired of not receiving the union benefits and pay that comes with actually working for the mill. Instead I receive the low wages, and bad benefits of the company I work directly under. I make okay money and am pretty smart with it. However the mill is not my dream. This town is not where I want to die. I would love to pursue a career in software development, or really anything in the tech field. but recently the mill has shown interest in hiring me. I could take the job, bust my ass for the rest of my life and make good money for this community’s standard, or I could decline the mills offer, stay working where I am now, take a demotion and start working part time where I will have more time and a more flexible schedule, and go to a cheap 2 year college with the money I have saved up in pursuit of a degree in computer science. With that degree, it could take me anywhere, it could make me loads of money, or it could do nothing at all. Essentially I will be risking a sure fire comfortable living with a job that I hate in a town I hate, or I could throw that job away, cut my pay checks in half and go to school and pursue my dreams. The mill is very social ranked and more personal than it should be, if they offer me the job and I decline it, chances are I will not get another offer, but due to the mills demanding hours, I would not be able to go to college while working there. They wouldn’t even hire me until I could work full time. And due to my location not having many opportunities in the tech field, I would almost surely have to relocate or get lucky enough to find remote work. So, reddit…what should I do?