Dropped out of UT Austin in 2019, now I fix boats and it's wild

I left after my sophomore year because I couldn't stand another semester of calc. Now I work at a marina in Port Aransas, mostly fiberglass repair, and I went from failing exams to patching hulls that people trust. It took about 18 months to feel like I actually knew what I was doing, and the pay is way better than any internship I was chasing. Has anyone else found their path through manual labor after quitting, or am I just weird?

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1 Comment

martinez.reese1d ago

My cousin did almost the exact same thing after bailing on Texas State in 2016, wound up doing HVAC work down in Corpus. He said the first year was brutal, lots of swearing and scraped knuckles, but now he runs his own side gig on weekends. There's something honest about fixing things with your hands that a classroom just can't give you. I bet your fiberglass work is way more satisfying than any spreadsheet you would have ended up staring at. It's nice to hear someone else found their way out of that spiral.